Who Knows What Evil Lurks?
by JMK758
Summary: Tony DiNozzo was kidnapped in the final seconds of 'Ventriloquist Affair'. As Gibbs and the team try to save him they must also deal with the on-going case before more innocent victims die.
1. Hunt

This is my 32nd NCIS Mystery, the Second story of my Fourth Season and it'll have a lot of surprises. 'NCIS' is owned by Belisarius Productions while Dr. Maura Isles hails from 'Rizzoli and Isles', which is owned and produced by Hurdler Productions and by Ostar Productions. By a not too great coincidence, she is portrayed by Sasha Alexander, the former Kate Todd.  
The usual legal Disclaimers apply. I make no money on this and only own Rev. Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee, Apprentice Pathologist Dr. Samantha Sky and original Agents.  
You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
This story takes place in the second week of June, moments after the end of 'The Ventriloquist Affair'. Ducky is presently enjoying a well deserved vacation in Edenborough with Dr. Jordan Hampton, his place having been taken by Dr. Maura Isles of Boston.  
Rated M for Mature, NCis-21  
Please Review.

Who Knows What Evil Lurks?  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
The Hunt

Newspaper Reporter Gina Lollobrigida steps out into the night and the parking lot of Gorman's Pub with her colleagues Pete Wishom and Judi Atwater, and it takes the three of them to steady the hulking Alex Cocheral. 'How can someone so big hold his liquor so horrendously?' Gina thinks, not for the first time as she turns Mount Cocheral in the general direction of Pete's four by four.

"Gina, look," Judi commands, points to her other side, far right to where two woman pull in a perverse tug-of-war on a garish scarf wrapped tightly about a kneeling man's throat.

With a blast of horror, Gina recognizes the strangling man. "HEY!"

The women look toward them, then one of them, the blonde twenty-something she'd seen inside earlier, pulls a lever and slides the white door of the van open. They pull the man to his feet, literally throw him into the cabin and scramble in after him.

"STOP!" Gina yells, abandoning her grip on Cocheral and probably any sense of self-preservation as well. A second later the van's motor roars to life and it screams out of the parking space with a shriek of rubber.

Gina yanks her cell phone from her jeans pocket.

xx

Leroy Jethro Gibbs grabs his light jacket, sufficient for the basement garage, then the few feet from his car to front door, his mind on his bed. McGee's at his desk, working mostly by monitor light, for the Operations Division lighting is off except for desk lamps.

McGee's working, though probably not too hard at 2116, on the Scalici case but Gibbs knows he's actually killing time waiting for his wife Siobhan, who's up in her office with the Palmers, and he thinks he's fooling someone.

Whatever the Palmers are saying to the Priest, they've been saying it for over four hours, but he's not going to get involved.

Pretty pointless to wait for her, Gibbs thinks. The couple came in separate cars, she this afternoon from her Church, but McGee clearly still doesn't seem to have the hang of marriage. He still considers the opportunity to spend the first available few minutes with his wife to be a priority. He'll learn - or he won't.

Tony and Ziva are the only ones who used a measure of sense; they've gone home or to more pleasant pursuits.

Pulling on his jacket, he heads for the bullpen's exit. Normally it's the entrance, at this hour it's the exit.

He waves a good night to McGee, wonders how much longer the wife's going to be but this isn't his concern - not like the aggravating ring of his cell phone. He doesn't pause, just pulls out the offending instrument. "Yeah, it's Gibbs and if no one took a shot at the SECNAV I'm taking one at you."

/Jethro it's Gina Lollobrigida someone just kidnapped Anthony DiNozzo./

x

Short stop, sleep blasted from his body by the urgent rush. "Where and when?" he demands of the reporter while waving sharply to McGee. He touches the 'speaker' button so the Agent can hear.

/Corcoran, a third of the block below 17, Gorman's Pub parking lot. I came out in time to see two women choking him, then shove him into the back of a white Chrysler minivan and rip out of here hard enough to leave streaks thirty feet long./

"Did you get the license?" he already has his pen and pad in hand. McGee's watching, fingers on his keyboard.

/Too dark./

"Keep people away." He slaps the cell phone closed, triples his pace to the elevator bank and his command voice fills the otherwise empty Operations Center.

"McGee, GPS on DiNozzo's phone _now_!" He slaps the call button and, this late at night, doesn't have to wait. The car's already here. "Get Palmer out of whatever she's doing, have her meet me in the garage. DiNozzo's been kidnapped," are his final words as the elevator door closes.

xxx

Gibbs spins the wheel right hard enough to challenge his '71 yellow and black Dodge Challenger Hemi to stay under control and survive for another year. He'd come up North Capital to R, turned left on 16th toward Scott Circle and accelerated beyond his normal pace.

A hard right onto Corcoran, two thirds of the street the wrong way before he might encounter properly directed cars, then he jerks right again to jump the curb into the dark parking lot. He twists the wheel one last time to avoid parallel black marks of what might well be the departing kidnap vehicle. His stomp on the brake piercingly announces his arrival to any who hadn't noticed his entrance.

Michelle Palmer, next to him, clutches at the door frame in a white two-handed grip, her normally almond eyes wide circles of terror. He's out of the car barely an instant after hitting the brake and she'd better follow fast.

x

Three white Metro PD units turn the otherwise dark lot into a red and blue strobe fest that he wishes would be put out. If he can find someone highly enough ranked he'll do it but for now he cares about getting the scene secured and getting answers.

He's called Ziva but she's in Maryland and highway traffic is limited, three lanes merging into one for a long stretch of late hour congestion in the Capital.

He sees Gina Lollobrigida leave another woman and two men and walk toward him from under the inadequate glow of the parking lot's single light atop the pub and he grabs and flips open his phone. The ringer signal is quickly cut off, he cuts the answer off before the first syllable. "McGee, you got that GPS fix?"

/His phone's off. I'm still trying to access the phone he still uses for Jeanne Benoit, thank God for habit and privacy issues, but I can't get a fix on the location. Something's distorting the signal./

"You've got two minutes, McGee." Lollobrigida stops before him; he has neither time nor interest in socializing and they know each other well enough. "What happened?"

"Much as I told you, not much more. Agent DiNozzo had been at the bar when I saw two women approach him."

"Descriptions?"

"Late 20's, early 30's. The light inside's as good as this," she waves her hand to the darkness staved off by one large light above Gorman's Pub's entrance and not much helped by the blue and red irregular strobes from the three RMPs.

There are many people blocked from leaving by Metro, but Gibbs notes that Palmer's talking to the other three people near that entrance, the ones Lollobrigida had left, and they seem to be asking more questions than they answer. Palmer had better have learned the value of 'no comment' as she collects the full story.

x

"What were they doing?"

"DiNozzo was at the bar when they came over to him. A few minutes later, as my friends and I were getting our stuff together, I saw them already walking out together."

"And then?"

"When I came out I saw them playing tug-of-war with something wrapped around Agent DiNozzo's neck. He was trying to fight them but they were out of reach. I yelled, started for them just as Agent DiNozzo went limp and they forced him through the side door of a white Chrysler minivan. "I found his gun near where the van was parked. It's still there."

They walk to the site, it's about five feet from the tire marks. He doesn't care if Metro, who he hopes he'll have time to deal with, have photographed or processed the weapon, it's not a major clue. He does use his phone to photograph it, he's learned how to do that much, before he scoops it up and pockets it. DiNozzo will want to use it when they find him.

Gibbs' cell phone signals him before he can return it to his pocket.

/Boss, I managed to get-/

"Where, McGee?"

"Signal is stationary 3.5 miles Northeast of your position, McMillan Park."

Gibbs remembers this area too well. Months ago it had hosted a County Fair; it's probably nearing time for the next one and last year there were scores of private generators that probably play havoc with McGee's tracer thingies.

"Get Ziva heading there. You keep on that signal and alert every Agent in the area." He slaps the phone closed, double time back to his car. "_PALMER_!"

She's smart enough to run.

xx

McMillan Park is tremendous, bordered by McMillan Drive, Bryant St, 1st St and the western border of the McMillan Reservoir. This, Gibbs recalls as he warps most of the physical laws of motion to cross the city, is the site of the County Fair where they'd caught McGee and O'Mallory on what had become their unofficial first date.

He barely pays attention to the lone guard shack as he turns off the street and blows past. If the Security Guard, whose startled face barely registers in passing, calls the Police on the speeding intruder, so much the better.

Best would be if he's already called about the white van.

The area is already about a third filled, based on what he remembers from last year's search for McGee, with the stuff of festivals. Trucks and vans and barely assembled booths and other structures dot the acres of grassland and do nothing but block views.

Last year the search was for a 'derelict' Agent who'd taken the day off while they worked a case, and that hunt had been motivated mostly by annoyance at being unable to reach the man by phone and return him to work.

This search is far more urgent.

x

Guided by that formerly misplaced agent through the speaker phone in Palmer's raised hand, he rockets through the area, caring less about the laws of driving than he had about the laws of motion.

/Continue on your course, you're headed straight to him. You're within three hundred yards./

"We're within three hundred of a building, McGee." Three football field lengths away, the single story brick structure is barely illuminated by the high tower lights.

/Last year there were few buildings in the park. Administration, the rest rooms, a maze..."

"It's the maze, McGee, tell us about it." He can see the wooden ticket booth set beside the entrance as he skids the car to a stop on the mown grass.

/Shav and I never went in, but it's supposed to be one of the biggest mazes on the East Coast./

"Would be."

x

"We're going in. Where's our backup?" he demands as he and Palmer get out, Sigs drawn.

/Ziva's about twenty minutes away. McCawley's team is about fifteen behind you./

Gibbs slaps his phone closed. The maze building ($4 to enter) is brick, sixty five feet to a side and too dimly illuminated by distant light towers, only a third of which are lit. If square, it's a potential 4,225 square feet.

He and Palmer take positions at opposite sides of the side by side entrance and exit doors and he checks her face. Anxious but no fear shining in her eyes. Good.

Presumably the maze doubles back upon itself. He signals silently to take their own sides and he grabs the handle of the left side Exit door, finger-counts down from three and he yanks while she shoves the Entrance.

"FEDERAL AGENTS DON'T MOVE!" His voice cuts and echoes through the tremendous room even before they see what challenges them.

There's a clear barrier between the agents, which extends from floor to eight feet high. Before them are far more barriers.

They have an almost unobstructed view of DiNozzo seated tied to a chair way at the opposite side over 20 yards away. There are far too many clear barriers doubling back and forth between them. The motionless agent's head is slumped down to his chest, his jacket off, both sleeves rolled high and he's heavily bound to the chair.

A blonde and a brunette woman in skirts too high and blouses too low turn about at Gibbs' commanding bellow. The Agents see there's an intravenous bag hanging from a stand beside DiNozzo with a tube leading into his left arm.

x

Immediately the women bolt for what at first looks to be the white wall but it's a door painted to match that barrier. It slams open with a muffled bang as they run through it into the night.

"Get him off that!" Gibbs commands as he turns, runs back out.

For an instant Michelle's confused. The maze appears to be clear barriers, glass so clean she can barely see it beyond the distortion of dozens of floor to eight foot high panes between her and the motionless man.

An arrow points to her right, the only help she can find and she takes the directed path. Left turn, left and right turn further along, then there are two possible turns but the left points her toward DiNozzo, right turn, left, she's headed for hi- No! Dead end, barriers on all sides.

Turn around, go back, turn left, get to the two choices, take the other route. DAMN! The glass is so clear she can barely see it. Left turn, choice, right points toward DiNozzo, left turn, long passage, right turn and now - No! Blocked again. Gotta go back.

Hurry! Faster! Correct the wrong turn, right, run, left, left, run faster, right, choice. Which one? She chose wrong twice already. Look through a hundred panels. DiNozzo's so still, the bag dripping whatever's flowing into his arm. Right! Left, left, right, long passage, left, right, right, right - _NO_! Looped into a box!

Turn around! Hurry! _Hurry!_ Right, left, long passage, run! Left, right, right - DAMNIT! Blocked again! Back, another choice, left points her in the right direction. _Hurry!_ No, _blocked_! GODDESS DAMN IT!

x

She's near the far right wall but less than half way across now. Several wrong turns have sent her back too many times, eroding her progress.

Furious even more than frustrated, she draws her Sig. She'll _make _a straight path, let NCIS foot the bill. She aims to DiNozzo's right, nearly forty feet away and about ten feet clear and fires.

The blast deafens her. It's far louder than in the basement firing range. She nearly drops the gun to clamp her hands over her pulverized eardrums but resists the instinctive defense and keeps hold of the Sig.

The bullet punched a hole in the pane, the one beyond and bounced off the third, about thirteen feet away. The holes are nothing, two holes with circular cracks around them. She aims a few inches off those and fires.

x

The thunder nearly shatters her eardrums but her urge to scream comes not from the pain but from the second set of neat holes. This bullet penetrated three layers but she actually watched the bullet bounce off the fourth. Her ears ring so loudly she can't even hear her frantic breaths.

DiNozzo hasn't moved. Whatever it is still drips into his arm _and who the Hell builds a maze with shatterproof glass_?

Enraged, she kicks the glass but can't even hear the result of the useless gesture for the loud ringing.

Forty feet to go, a hundred wrong turns. She could empty her clip and do no more than deafen herself and that damn bag continues to drip that damned whatever that she can't stop!

x

There's only one thing she can do. Gibbs doesn't like it, no one likes it when she 'cheats' so she always restrains herself, but this time they can lump it. She can't get to DiNozzo, not in this damned maze, but she can_ reach_ him.

She forces her frustration and anger down as best she can. There's no place for tem and they only interfere with her magic. Press it down, relax, relax. Feel the essence of the Goddess around her.

Reach out. Reach out. She extends her hand, action helps to focus thought and she reaches past the barriers, one after the other, further and further, reaches for DiNozzo, reaches for the needle stuck in his arm. She can see it, she can focus on it, she can virtually touch it. Forty something feet away and she can almost touch it, sticking there in his arm. She can almost feel it.

Now focus. Touch it. Hold it. Pull it out. Pull. _Pull_.

x

It's not moving. WHY is it not moving? She can see it. Pull.

More power. She needs more power. Pull. Pull. She can feel it. PULL! _PULL_! It's not moving. _Damn it_, why isn't this working? Damn it! It works. It _always _works. WHY ISN'T IT _WORKING_?

She tries harder still, focuses until she can feel the needle between her fingers. She pulls harder - _harder _- but nothing's happening!

Her hand, her arm trembles with the sustained effort and she fights, forces more power - _shoves _more power through her arm. Her hand's getting _hot_. With this much raw force she should be able to move the chair with him on it! It _has _to work. It does work. _WHY ISN'T IT WORKING_?

x

Anger breaks the connection. She's lost it. "DAMN IT!" She pounds her fists on the fractured glass. "DAMN IT! DAMN IT! DAAAMMMNNN IT!"

It should've worked, but she can't stand here screaming and pounding on a wall. She has to reach DiNozzo, she has to save him but she can't get through the maze, she can't magick the needle out, she can't -

x

_Wait_! There's a way. She'd been so frustrated, so mad that she couldn't think. She doesn't have to pull across forty feet, she doesn't have to exhaust herself forcing the material world to her will, she only has to save Special Agent DiNozzo.

x

She lays down flat on her back and tries not to hear the ringing in her ears, tries to push out the anger and frustration. She can do this. She can do this.

She closes her eyes, hurries to control her erratic breathing, forces herself to ease her tight muscles, rushes through the relaxation phase, fights to break the bonds between body and essence. Normally the process, when she's calm and relaxed, takes a few minutes but she doesn't _have _minutes.

She should do this within a Circle of Protection, but there's no time. She has to do this _now_.

She fights to force the angry frustration out of her, fights to relax, to cast the Projection spell that will free her from her body.

It's a strange sensation, trying to force what normally comes so freely if she had the time and if her heart wasn't pounding like a jackhammer.

She fights the frustrated rage, tries to smother it with calm. She starts to feel the duality, the sense of being two rather than one. She's never tried this without preparation and protection, never did it outside a Circle of Protection but there's no time and it's working. This is working where her power had failed her before.

x

She feels the duality grow sharper. Second by second she feels the distinctiveness, that curious 'side-by-side' sensation within her body.

Then, as it should, the sense of the physical starts to fade. More and more the awareness of her body, what she feels, steadily fades until she's less and less aware of the physical, of sensation, of her body. The material world, her body, the cold floor, all become less and less distinct, fade, fade...

It's gone.

x

She opens her eyes, eyes that aren't really here, but when she opens those eyes as she would her physical ones she can see. The ceiling above, the glass walls, they're there, still distinct, but she knows that to her now they're meaningless - shadows only - no more significant than her body.

She sits up, using the same will that she would to move her body but her body doesn't move. She just sits up, moves as she would normally move but doesn't. She simply does.

She stands up, using the same will and intent as she would to move her legs, coordinate her body and stand up, but when she turns and looks down...

It's always odd, this looking down on her still body. Her chest rises and falls but she has no sensation of it. It's like looking down on someone else, someone alive and identical to her, yet distinct. She's always imagined that if she had an identical twin sister, it would be like this, watching her sleep but without the sensation.

x

But there's no time. She turns because she wants to turn and she moves because she wants to move and she faces the clear holed barrier, the dozens that had so frustrated her - and she walks forward.

There's no sensation. She's moving because she wants to, passes through one barrier after another, no sensation, no touching, she just walks and knows she's passing the obstacles, walks up to DiNozzo.

The last barrier is behind her and she stops before him. He looks horrible. He's not moving, barely breathing and his skin has a sickly pallor. She also sees why she'd failed before. The tube is taped with three inch wide tape to secure it to his arm right up to the thick needle end and the needle is taped over the insertion point. The tape is bunched about the needle end and the needle... her brute force had moved it and if not for the Goddess-damned tape -!

No, she can't let anger get her. Anger will break her separation as effectively as a touch on her physical body would and she'll snap back into her flesh faster than her physical eyes can blink. She must be calm, she must stay calm.

No force she could apply could move this needle out against this much unknown resistance. If she had been able to see, maybe, but moving the needle back and out had been hopeless.

Okay. Even now, standing next to the bound man, she can only think of one effective treatment she can render. The tube is soft plastic and if she can bend it, crimp the flow, she can save DiNozzo.

She doesn't have to reach out and fold the tube, simple will is enough. She wants the tube bent and watches it fold over, crimp tight, held against itself. As she watches, the flow from the bag stops, no place to go.

She can hold this. She's not as powerful as someone like Kendra Little, but she can hold a piece of soft plastic folded indefinitely, and when Gibbs arrives he can-

The door far behind her slams open against the brick wall and startles her, almost makes her lose her concentration. She can only see forward; it's not like she actually has eyes or a head to turn. If she allows her concentration to falter for just an instant to perceive what's behind her the tube will open and she might just snap back to her body and have to start over again.

And whatever deadly poison had been flowing into DiNozzo's arm will resume and may kill him before Gibbs figures out the maze.

She has to ignore everything around her and hold this tube.


	2. Get Her Out of Here

Chapter Two  
Get her out of here

Gibbs slams the Exit door to the huge maze out of his way. It crashes into the brick wall with a loud bang and he follows his Sig into the labyrinth. The sight that greets him does little for his nerves.

He'd run around the corner of the wide building and saw the two women heading toward him and the white van that stood between them. They'd tried to run, but high heels on uneven ground had been their downfall - in the blonde's case literally so. He'd caught up to her when the brunette ran off, and she gave him little challenge. Face down, right wrist cuffed back to slim left ankle had ended her escape.

The brunette, having half a minute head start while he'd secured her cohort, was slightly more of a challenge, but within a quarter kilometer on grass he'd brought her down and secured her with his reserve cuffs to a three hundred pound generator. Then, ignoring pleas and screams alike, he'd run back to the maze building.

The back door was a panic bar on the inside, nothing at all on the outside, forcing him to run to the front where he'd run into the Security Guards in their jeep and sent the anxious men toward the first of his prisoners while giving orders for Metro Police aid and an ambulance.

Now inside the clear maze he pulls up his Sig, takes in the scene at a glance. Palmer's midway up the far right white wall, laying on her back (Why? Unconscious?) DiNozzo's at the far end, tied to a chair. He also notices the bullet holes in the glass panels beyond Palmer. She'd tried to shoot. Did she take herself out with a ricochet? She's too far away for him to see blood.

He sees the arrow near the entrance which directed Palmer to her right, but he's at the exit and turns left, straight to the far left corner, then a right to skim the length of the building all the way to the far corner.

His hard run ends with a right turn and DiNozzo.

He hurries to the bound man, notes as he arrives that the tube is kinked over, the flow of liquid stopped - until for some reason it takes that moment to unbind.

He clenches the tube in his right fist, with his left hand he fishes the folding knife from his back pocket, opens it and severs the tube a half inch from DiNozzo's arm, quickly knots the tube to stem the flow that washes over his hands. Abby - no, Ruby Rae - will need all she can get to analyze this stuff so they can get the antidote.

He glances back long enough to see Michelle Palmer sit up. She doesn't look wounded. Why didn't she get here?

He shelves this question, turns to cutting DiNozzo's ropes.

Where the Hell are the EMTs?

x

Michelle Palmer sits up, not at all an easy thing after an Astral Projection that ends like this one has. She should take time to run through the reintegration process to rejoin soul to body but adrenaline helps get her up where Wiccan Magic doesn't.

She pushes herself to her feet, sees Gibbs cutting Agent DiNozzo loose, and staggers to the side, slams into the glass corner. This is all that keeps her from falling again.

When Gibbs had arrived, from her forward perspective seeming to appear out of thin air, her focus on the tube had slipped and she watched it open and him grab it. Then he stepped into the same space she was in. She felt the momentary disturbance of his being inside her in a way nowhere as pleasant as sex, and it flung her back into her own body.

There are three ways to end an Astral Projection: the proper way through willed reintegration, the spontaneous return if something touches her quiescent body and then this way, the slightly sickening intrusion of another living being into her. The first way is natural and somewhat pleasant, the second way leaves her spirit ringing as though her physical body were a large bell... and then there's this way. It slamed her back inside her body like a Warner Brothers cartoon character colliding head-on with a brick wall.

Normally she can withstand it and not break, this time she can't do more than feel nauseated.

"PALMER!" Gibbs is looking back to her, but his voice sounds like it's working through cotton wadding.

"Yessir?" she calls, trying to balance without the Earth tilting her off. Agent Gibbs has Agent DiNozzo freed and is easing him onto the floor. She'd join them but something is very wrong with this reintegration, worse than any slam-bang she's ever known.

"Get outside. When the Ambulance arrives, send them in the Exit, left and straight on in."

He turns his attention back to the still man on the floor and Michelle, looking to the opposite side of the room and realizing how horribly she's been fooled, turns and carefully works her way, with still too many wrong turns and uncertainties, back toward the Entrance.

xx

Within twenty minutes the flashing blue and red lights of too many Metro PD units sting Michelle's eyes and she must hold her hand to block the more painful lights from her squinting eyes. Ziva had arrived seconds before the ambulance, Tim skidded his silver/grey Porsche Boxster to a stop while the EMTs check DiNozzo in the far end of the maze. By now, everyone who needs to knows the solution to the maze and she feels more idiotic by the minute.

She's been ordered to hold the perimeter from any intruders, but with almost a dozen Metro units and an ambulance, who is she holding it against? She knows Gibbs' mind; he's angry, frustrated as she had been earlier, but there's no one to lash against. There's not even a perp to gather evidence about to use in the hunt. The women are captured and McGee's been sent to interrogate the cuffed prisoners already inside two of the Metro units. She wishes she'd been sent as well.

She'd failed. She'd tried to save Special Agent DiNozzo, had been desperate to save him, and she'd failed. She'd gotten lost in a puzzle designed to challenge school children and vacationers. Gibbs had solved the puzzle in three seconds. She'd spent - wasted - so much time. So much time.

What if she'd wasted too much?

x

The sky is black and overcast, no friendly stars look down. Overcast darkness seems to inhabit her soul as she waits and waits and waits. Finally, the exit door opens. Ziva holds it aside for two white shirted men who wheel a gurney between them and angle with their too still burden toward the ambulance. Ziva accompanies them, her stony grim expression telling Michelle more than she wants to know.

Gibbs stops beside her, watches silently as his friend, their partner, is loaded into the ambulance, seeming little more than luggage for all the life he displays. Ziva climbs aboard after him, the door is closed and half a minute later the wailing siren demands right-of-way out of the park, bearing its too still cargo.

"Where are they taking him"

"MedStar Medical Center is the closest." Only then does he turn to her. "What happened in there?"

"Sir, I mean Special–" His glare down to her shuts her up. This isn't the time for nervous stammering. She takes a deep, lung rupturing breath, holds it, lets it out. "Sir, I tried to save him, I tried, but I kept getting lost. Kept getting held up. I tried to shoot the glass, but it wouldn't break."

"When I got in there, you were flat on your back. What happened? Did you faint?"

She hears the warning. 'If you fainted and DiNozzo doesn't recover, you'll prefer death.'

"No, sir. I didn't faint."

"Then what happened?"

She would give her life rather than say the words, but there's no way to lie, not about this. "When I couldn't get to him, I tried to use magic to pull the needle out. I tried, tried hard, but I couldn't."

The look in his eyes is the same one she'd imagine he'd give her if she'd announced she'd stopped to make a pizza.

x

"When I couldn't get the needle out and couldn't get to him I Astral Projected to reach him. When I did, I found out why I couldn't pull the needle and instead I pinched–" She can see her death in his volcanic eyes.

"You're saying instead of helping him you wasted more time on your magic while he was dying?"

She falls a step away from the battering force of his rage. She's known Gibbs to be angry, to be furious, but he's scarlet-faced with rage. "Sir, I did." She looks toward the ambulance. "I was–"

A hammer smashes into the back of her head, stuns her as she staggers, wobbles on her high heels and barely keeps on her feet when she stops seven paces away. The pain in the back of her head is so devastating she's afraid she's about to lose consciousness.

She turns, right hand to her head, and looks back and up to the mountainous man backlit by the towering lights that leave his face in shadow. His hand is up between them and he's looking as much at it as past it to her. She can still make out his face and the look in his eyes is absolutely terrible; fury coupled with the realization of what he's done.

This wasn't like his usual 'wake-up' calls that she's been spared for a year.

"Boss?" Tim's voice comes from behind Gibbs, a moment later he steps into view but she can't take her eyes off Gibbs. "Is something wrong?" he finishes uncertainly. Did he see, or is he only seeing now?

Gibbs doesn't look at him but points at her, his hand like a cannon about to fire. "Get her out of here."

"I'm _sorry_!"

But the glare he gives her only warns how sorry she's going to be.

xxx

Tim McGee feels the silence a burden that rests heavily about him as he drives the silent woman toward Georgetown. Michelle stares straight ahead, her body rigid. He sees, in the alternating lights of the streetlamps, tears glistening on her cheeks and can't contain the question any longer. "What happened back there?"

"I failed," she says, her voice breaking miserably. "Agent DiNozzo's going to die and it's my fault."

"How?"

"I got lost. I got lost in that maze and I couldn't get to him. I tried. I TRIED!"

"I know you did."

She turns on him. "You weren't even there!"

"But I know you. I know you'd try."

The fight falls out of her. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't get to him."

"And Gibbs did?" She nods, the tears flowing down her cheeks. "So why's he mad at you?"

She fights to stop crying, fights get the words out. "I tried to Spell the needle out. I couldn't see that it was taped to his arm."

x

He looks to her, divides his attention carefully between her face and the street. Fortunately he only has to keep his hands still. "Spell?" She nods. She couldn't have meant... He checks the street; mid-street, still a straight block. He can look at her. "You mean you tried to use Witchcraft?" She nods, even more miserably, her eyelids clenched to lock the tears. "Michelle, how could you?"

"I did my _best_. When I couldn't get the needle out I Astral Projected, managed to hold the tube bent double until Gibbs got there and got the needle out."

"Well, that's good." Looking back to the street, crossing an empty intersection, he realizes a moment later the implications of what he's said. Differing Faiths is one thing, that's a PC issue and if Shav won't condemn her for believing in Witchcraft then he won't either, but this is saving Tony from some unknown poison.

Faith is one thing but falling back on something as fanciful as Witchcraft when a man's life is at stake is more than unpardonable. It's insane.

But she'd said she held the tube closed. But if it worked, however it worked - did it work? - then why's she crying? That's what he chooses to ask her.

"Gibbs hit me."

'Well, that truce lasted longer than I thought.' "Gibbs hits all of us. Welcome back to the club."

x

She leans closer to the limit of her strap. "No. I mean he _hit _me. _Hard_! He nearly knocked me off my feet." He glances at her for as long as he dares, not wanting to believe. "He hit me so hard he nearly knocked me out."

Tim tries to balance watching the road with looking at her, the image conjured by her exclamation leaving him feeling absolutely incredulous. He can barely picture the moment, but it had to have happened. When he'd turned Gibbs and Michelle had been standing staring at one another, but when he'd stepped up to the pair Gibbs had looked as devastated as Michelle had.

"And the worst thing," she continues, barely able to articulate the words, "is that he might be right - that if I'd looked harder and found the solution to the maze Tony might still be alive!"

"Now hang on." He slows the car. He's not going to go this far. "Tony was alive when they drove off. I don't know what went on back there but he's not dead until the doctors say he's dead."

She turns forward in the seat again and though she's silent, hand covering her eyes and her upper body shaking, he knows she's still crying and he's run out of words.

xxx

Michelle lets herself into the dark living room, holds off turning on a light until she sees the bedroom door at the end of the left hall is closed.

She doesn't feel like trying to sleep. She wants to get in early.

'If those bitches don't confess immediately I'll show them _real _magic. I'll tie their fallopian tubes in knots!'

x

She stops short. Not only is that thought completely unlike her, abhorrent to anything a practitioner of Wicca should think, but she realizes with a stab of guilt that she'd meant it.

'No. This is nuts, I'm tired - and I'm scared as hell - and Wicca doesn't _have _hell.'

She'd love to sleep, but doing it for two or three hours will only leave her feeling more exhausted - as though she could feel more emotionally exhausted.

She decides all she can do, this long before sunrise, is pray. She'd never imagined she'd be praying for Tony DiNozzo, but she's never imagined any part of this night.

'But everything's in the bedroom.' All her supplies are inside the wheeled table she uses as an altar. But she doesn't even feel like Casting a Circle or any formality at all. Time to choose the practices of her Episcopalian half.

She uses the coffee table to ease herself down on aching legs. She should have been home by 1700, not...

'No. Clear the mind. Push aside resentment,' she thinks, remembering lessons drummed in for years. 'Pray.'

'Pray what? Nothing's coming.' She clenches her fists but forces herself to open them again. Anger makes her want to do it again. She forces it back. It won't go back.

'Let's see. God, please save Tony. No, that's not right. Siobhan says prayer shouldn't be formal. Words don't matter. Just pray. Pray what? I'm not Siobhan, Siobhan has a prayer at the tip of her mind for every possible occasion. It's not fair. It's not _fair_! Tony's going to die and I can't even come up with one lousy, stinking–'

"Hi, honey."

She whirls on her knees. He's at the hall entrance, just in his boxers and smiling at her. "KNOCK _DAMN IT_! KNOCK, CAN'T YOU?"

He backs away from her furious scream into the hallway and looks as shocked as he does scared. She's not sure what prompted that scream – or rather is sure and longs to take it back.

"'Chelle?"

She gets up, hurries across the room and hugs his warm bare body desperately.

"Oh, Jimmy - _I've killed Tony DiNozzo_!"

xxx

By the time McGee drops Michelle off in Georgetown it's after one o'clock and at best, if he drives Gibbs-speed which he won't, he has another forty five minutes before he can get home to Sligo Park in Silver Spring.

Gibbs is likely to remain with Ziva at MedStar with Tony. Agents have transported and secured those women to Holding Cells and he hopes that if he gets in early enough he can take a crack at one or both of them before Gibbs arrives in the morning.

Michelle will be in then as well. She's probably safer at a distance from Gibbs until Tony's out of the woods - whatever woods whatever those women did to him put him in - but there's no chance of that.

The morning will be horrible no matter what any of them do. The only thing they may be sure won't happen for any of them is sleep.

xx

He lets himself into his apartment, being very quiet, but as soon as the door opens he sees it's an unnecessary precaution. The living room light is on, as is the kitchen's, and no sooner does he close the door when Siobhan steps out from the kitchen's entrance.

She's wearing her green robe and the moment he sees her eyes he knows things have gone wrong. He'd called her after pulling Michelle out of the evening Counseling Session with Jimmy Palmer to tell her why he'd be really late and had advised her to go home and to sleep without him.

One glance into her emerald eyes and he knows it's the most wasted advice he'd ever given her. If things had gone better, he wouldn't be so late.

"How is he?" she asks even before she reaches him for a hug and kiss. The hug is long.

"I don't know. In MedStar hospital. Gibbs and Ziva are with him. That's all I know."

"I've been praying for him."

"I know."

"You've heard nothing?"

"You know Gibbs."

She nods, a single sharp motion she won't add words to. They won't know anything until there's something to know.


	3. Vigil

Chapter Three  
Vigil

'Why do hospitals always have to smell so sterile? How can sterile even have a smell?'

How can it be so silent at three in the morning when Gibbs' soul is raging? He wants answers, wants to rip them from Nurses who pass back and forth, in and out from and to the MedStar Medical Center's Emergency Room behind the double doors. Every time someone enters or leaves they don't look at him or the silent woman seated on the bench beside him.

It's been over an hour since the ambulance rushed the unconscious Tony DiNozzo from McMillan Park and thus far his only way of keeping track of time has been the intermittent loudspeaker calls for specific doctors to aid in completely irrelevant cases.

Normally he'd appreciate Ziva's silence but tonight he needs more than silence. And because he's been clear for a very long time about his preferences he expects to get no more.

x

Another Nurse comes out from the left side door and he almost rises but she walks past without a glance at him or Ziva, and grabbing her and ripping answers out of her won't help. Watching her retreating form, he tells himself again that he'll have to–

"Gibbs." Ziva's already up, his rise is half automatic and he's on his feet even before he completely processes the white coated man with the fake reassuring expression.

"How is he?" Gibbs demands before the man has released the swinging door.

"At the moment he's stable, but until we know from the Lab what your Agent DiNozzo has been injected with, all we can do is use saline solution and blood transfusions to try to flush whatever it is from his system."

Gibbs had used the resources of the EMT Ambulance to split the contents of the bag roughly evenly, half to MedStar and half to NCIS' lab, and that fill-in Forensic Scientist Ruby Rae had better be in and hard at work on it.

"Can I see him?"

"He hasn't recovered consciousness. I don't know when that will be."

He turns to Ziva. No point in both of them exhausting themselves; the ones who know what was used on DiNozzo are at NCIS. "Go back. I don't care how you get the answer to what they used so long as you get it."

"I shall get it."

"That's enough of that, Officer David," Director Jennifer Shepherd's voice breaks in sharply. They turn, neither happy to see the boss. "I've assigned Special Agent Paulsen's team to interrogate those women."

"Director–" Ziva knows she's breaking protocol but she expects it's not going to matter which of them voices the protest.

"On account that at this moment you are both too personally involved in this case. We don't want anyone to mishandle this case like in violating their Constitutional Rights without getting the answers to what they used on Special Agent DiNozzo."

Ziva looks from Shepherd to Gibbs and sees in his eyes that he has no intention of letting the prisoners slip out of any legal loophole. Those women will be broken and will answer for their crimes.

"Now I suggest you each get some rest. It's 0337 and you're going to need to be sharp to deal with this. Those two are in good hands."

Ziva can virtually read Gibbs' mind.

xxx

'_Four thirty in the morning_,' Michelle Palmer thinks bitterly as she throws her white robe over the cushioned backless chair before her round mirrored bureau. The plush robe feels better under her than the cushioned chair would as she sits down. The touch lamp on Jimmy's side of the bed behind her is only at two thirds, just bright enough to see by as it reflects over her right shoulder off the mirror onto her bare chest and face.

She looks at her mirrored husband snoring softly, sound asleep, and feels another stab of resentment. 'Yeah, snore, go ahead, _your _life isn't coming apart.'

She looks to herself, over-exhausted eyes bloodshot and haunted, face carved deep with fear, misery and lack of sleep. 'Fifty-eight fracking minutes.' That's how long had passed from the last time she'd lain awake on the bed and stared at the red digits on her clock radio until she looked again and realized she _had _slept.

She'd tried to make herself sleep again, to force herself to sleep, to batter her teeming mind into submission to let her sleep, and finally she gave up.

She'd left Jimmy asleep on the bed - 'yeah, _he _can sleep' -. She fights the bitterness. He had stayed awake, had held her while she cried, had done everything a male could do for her but he'd dozed off and left her alone.

x

Okay, she'd gone still and he probably thought she'd gone off, but the truth is she'd been too miserable to move. So, his arm draped over her from behind, she'd stayed still and watched the red numbers on her radio change from one to another to another, minutes to tens of minutes to hours to eternity until she'd given up, slipped out from under his arm, unable to stand his soft breathing and occasional snores for one more second, clenched her fist about her robe and had gone in search of another way to fall asleep.

She'd showered and shampooed and conditioned and body washed and showered and shampooed and conditioned and body washed and showered and shampooed and ran out of conditioner and body washed and dried herself and lotioned and moisturized - someday she'll make someone explain _that _idiocy to her - and only brought the robe back out with her because her chair padding would stick uncomfortably if she didn't protect herself. She'd turned on the touch lamp just enough not to wake Jimmy but then she'd sat here on the chair instead of on the bed because a hot triple shower hadn't relaxed her one bit...

x

Behind her she sees, in the mirror, Jimmy turn over more to her side - 'why can't he stay on his _own_? Now I _can't _get back on.' - but his arm reaches for her, up and down the mattress. Even asleep he reaches for her and her heart softens. He loves her so much.

'If you were _awake _like you're _supposed _to be you'd find me.'

She rips her attention from him in the mirror back to herself. Exhaustion is chiseled onto her face where it can find room between misery and fear. Even in the dim reflected light the sterling silver circled star and cross emblem glistens between her breasts. A little more than an inch in diameter, the five pointed star within the circle, perhaps the best publicly known Wiccan emblem, is unique for the passion cross within the inverted pentagon, the emblem of her dual faiths.

Jimmy had designed and given it to her as a token of his eternal love, and from that moment she'd never removed it. Twice blessed, once by herself and once by Kendra Little - and once, she thinks reluctantly, by Mother McGee - it's her most precious symbol of faith and love. She remembers the day he gave it to her. He'd designed it; there's nothing like it in the world, and from that moment she knew, beyond all possible doubt, that he was the one.

She'll keep it on forever, this symbol of Jimmy's love.

She recalls with as much of a smile as her depression will allow how he'd asked, in the early days before that, when he was coming to terms with her rather complicated viewpoint of faith, 'an Episcopalian Witch. How do you reconcile that?' 'It gives me headaches,' she'd replied.

She still hasn't 'reconciled' it.

x

She picks up her brush, knowing if she doesn't start to brush out her long hair while it's still wet she'll have to start over again and Jimmy will have to content himself with a cold shower.

Pulling the brush through her black locks, blacker now for being wet in the dim light, she encounters a snag and tries to fight her way through, the pain making her grimace more sharply as she pulls harder and harder until she wins. She continues brushing, grateful to find no more snags though the stinging in her scalp only gradually fades as she runs the bristles hard over the spot again and again.

Finally it's done and she sets the brush down and considers her make-up. What can she do to disguise the ravages of misery and exhaustion? What moisturizer and base and complexion cream and powder and blush will combine to cast a spell to make her forget that she's killed her partner?

She sees the clock radio reflected past her and turns around so she can correctly interpret the time. The radio will go off in 23 minutes and wake them to start a fresh new day. Does she lie down, try to squeeze in a twenty minute nap or just continue to try to make herself look...?

'Oh, the hell with it!' She pulls the star and cross necklace up over her head, sets the silver emblem and chain in the left corner of her bureau, gets up and crosses the room, slaps the lamp twice, up to full, then off and lays down on Jimmy's vacated side.

At least the mattress is warm.

xxx

Tim McGee steps off the elevator and crosses into the bullpen in the huge Operations Division, and though the skylight above their heads proclaims a brightly sunlit morning with no clouds in sight, inside it's murky and grim.

Every Agent he sees who sees him greets him with the same expression. Everyone knows. Tony's plight made ZNN and other news channels - what can be expected when the four witnesses to the kidnapping were Reporters? - but no one has answers.

He and Shav had woken to prayer, of course, and her assurance that Tony would be remembered at Services today both at Saint Mary the Virgin and in Tony's own parish - she'll see to that notification - but now that he's here he's less interested in prayer than he is in answers.

He's already spoken once to Gibbs and once to Ziva and the old adage about 'no news' still doesn't apply. The doctors are doing what they can, if that's how one describes 'nothing' these days. No one seems to know what Tony's been poisoned with, though they, NCIS, FBI and Metro all have samples of the stuff on the theory that four labs will get an answer faster than one. Maybe they're right, but none of them are Abby.

But Abby's over a thousand miles away as the jet flies and there are no Navy-fast jets between them so she'll have to rely on commercial flights.

He doesn't even know her status, there's no answer on her cell phone and their illustrious Director, in her wisdom, has given Tony's case over to Paulsen's team, thinking - probably rightly - that Gibbs will interrogate their prisoners to death to get his answers.

He wonders again what was on her mind. There's following the rules, and then there's nonsense. Paulsen should have caught Scalici's accomplice; this is what's important!

He suspects that though they've been restricted to the Scalici 'Puppet Master' investigation, that'll last only an hour more.

x

His only partner here is Michelle, and as he boosts himself a few inches out of his chair to look past the low partition between their desks she's on the phone. Her posture shrieks tension.

Considering the state she was in when he'd dropped her off last night, he holds himself to a wave that she sees and ignores and he sits back down. Now he can just see down to her forehead; he always has to straighten high to talk to her.

He turns on his computer; regardless of how many safeguards he has he doesn't keep it on overnight, and calls up the most recent–

"Suo you de zhe xie chun shi! Zhen shi ge wu nao de bai chi!"

Tim glances to his right. Another boost out of his seat and he can see the sharp anger on Michelle's face. He can't understand her angry Chinese epithets but he knows the tone so well.

Shav uses a similar tone, though hers is much milder than the rage that batters the partition. His wife only uses it and restricts herself to Gaelic when she's expressing thoughts she considers beneath her dignity to speak of even in the privacy of their apartment. She occasionally exhibits some of 'the classic traits of a redhead' and to date he's never been foolish enough as to ask for a translation.

x

"Ben dan!" The sharp epithet startles him. "Ta mei zai xiao xue li, zai chang deng shang zou shen me?"

He stands up, the better to see her over the partition. She's gripping the phone handset as though trying to strangle it, and slams it down onto its cradle hard enough to break it. "Michelle?"

She pivots toward him at warp speed. "_WHAT_!"

'Okay, past time to rein it in.' He considers himself the most patient and understanding man on the team, but she is not going to yell at him. "What's wrong?"

She stands up, a small hill of fury. She'd come in this morning in brown skirt and matching vest over cream blouse, but there's nothing soft about her. "Grekor Kanyicska made bail."

He restrains himself from saying 'what?' By the look in her brown eyes she's ready to tear someone's throat out and he likes his where it is. "How much was it?"

"A million dollars."

"For an Arms Dealer?" Now he appreciates her frustration; and this on top of their worry over Tony. "He probably keeps ten times that much cash in his basement."

"_Yes_. And now that he's out he's probably already on his way to California."

"They're letting him-"

"He couldn't be _held _on anything related to the Uranium because he never had it and we had no _proof _that he was going to buy it. He _was _held on Attempted Murder charges of you and Special Agent Nell Jones, but bail was granted."

She snatches up a semi-spherical paperweight and cocks her hand back, aiming for her monitor.

"MICHELLE!"

She glares at him, arm still cocked and he's not sure if she hasn't just changed targets. "Take a break."

"I just got here."

"How much sleep did you get?" Even with Shav's help he'd gotten very little.

"_Fine_." She slams the paperweight down on her desk and the metal rings through Operations, but better than through the monitor and assaulting the phone again. This is shaping up to potentially be a very expensive morning for her, but he's relieved when she leaves her cubical and stalks toward the rear door. Her gait telegraphs her rage and Special Agent Stenberg, approaching from the opposite direction, veers aside to stay clear of her.

x

Tim moves out from behind his desk to a position where he can watch her until she shoves the rear door out of her way and disappears through it.

He glances around Operations in time to catch heads disappearing behind other partitions.

He feels very relieved when the elevator's chime signals the car's arrival and he turns to see Gibbs and Ziva approach. But then he realizes the first thing Gibbs is likely to want to know is about the absent Palmer. "Boss, Grekor Kanyicska made bail.

"So what're you doing just standing there, McGee?"

McGee hurries around his desk and picks up his phone, grateful for the power of distraction. "Calling the Office of Special Projects."

"Special Agent Jones will be crapped," Ziva says. No one tries to correct her.

"Well, yeah, Ziver. Made to run around almost naked for three days in a Princess Leia slave outfit in front of 15,000 fans and service three guys Undercover; yeah she'll be pissed. Where's Palmer?"

Okay, so much for distraction. "She's, er, she's–"

"Right here, sir." Her brisk and cheerful voice makes him nearly wrench his neck in the turn. She's entering the rear of the bullpen and the placidity in her eyes nearly makes his own eyes bulge. "How is Special Agent DiNozzo?"

x

Motion stops throughout the bullpen, but though Gibbs stands staring at Palmer, accusation thick in the air between them, he says nothing. McGee holds his breath, more concerned about the conflict between them than the answer to the question.

It's David that breaks the silence. "We do not know. His Doctors do not even know yet what those women used on him. They are treating him with several poison control methods but he has not regained consciousness."

"Palmer," Gibbs' voice is controlled, held steady by chains of iron, "Paulsen's people on the interrogation of those women?"

"Yes, sir, in I's 1 and 2. I gave instructions Special Agent Paulsen is to notify you as soon as they have answers."

"Who are these two?"

She steps to her desk. Tim is about to answer, phone ringing in his ear - he'd begun researching them at home, linked to NCIS' secure files - but his forwarded call to LA's OSP connects and he's locked out, for the moment, from this conversation. Too late he recalls the sun hasn't even risen for their California counterparts. What a time to deliver bad news to, of all people, Henrietta Lange.

x

"Andrea Harper." Michelle says as she directs the blonde woman's picture to the plasma screen on the other side of Tim's desk as Gibbs and David approach it. A moment later Ziva's phone rings and she crosses back to answer it. She'll stay where she is, the images on her monitor. The longer she can stay out of Gibbs' reach, the safer she feels. "She seems to have led a somewhat privileged life; third generation Bostonian money. Her grandfather made a vast fortune in the liquor business following, and very likely before and throughout, Prohibition, and his daughter married up in the ship building industry. Her husband's family built the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeths 1 and 2 and a whole fleet of very profitable vessels under too many different companies. I'm betting Daddy gets her bailed out long before it's set."

She looks to the group, sees Gibbs' glare and decides opinions, especially negative or pessimistic ones, are particularly unwelcome this morning. In fact, even if the rest of the day goes perfectly, she's probably flirting with being fired by lunchtime.

"Educated in Harvard, she was a highly placed member of the Zeta Phi Chapter of the Delta Gamma Sorority and still maintains a major force in Alumni activities."

"What's she doing trying to kill a Federal Agent?" Gibbs sounds like he doesn't expect a ready answer, for which she's relieved because she doesn't have one other than

"Whatever she's doing, she's doing it with Janette - born Janet - Vancer," the brunette suspect's face appears on the screen, probably taken from another Society column, "who's only a Second Generation Heiress. She had the name legally changed two years ago. Vancer's father Harold made his money in the Paper Industry, raping forests before it became gauche." Gibbs turns to her, an interesting expression on his face. She doesn't care about it.

"Vancer is in everything from Newspapers to being a major stockholder in Hammermill Paper. She too has more money than anyone deserves, but the early connection I found so far between these two is that she's also a Harvard alumni and a member of Zeta Phi."

x

"McGee," Gibbs cuts in on him the moment he hangs up his phone, somewhat relieved that OSP has their Analyst's safety and the renewed threat both in hand. "What update on John Scalici and that Puppet Mistress?"

"Nothing new, boss." Has it only been a few hours before this nightmare began, Tony was attacked and they began a second major case? He can well understand Gibbs' sudden course change. If they can't work on there two suspects until Paulsen's people have made enough progress - or not enough - for Gibbs to invoke his Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge status to bulldoze his way into the case, they might as well continue work on their 'current' case.

"But we do have something on Tony," Ziva says, returning to Gibbs' side. "I have received a call from Doctor Beniot. She heard about Tony's attack on the news."

Gibbs considers this no surprise. You can't get four Reporters, Newspaper reporters though they are, together as witnesses to a kidnapping and expect to keep it quiet. That's why he hadn't even tried. "What did she say?"

"She was, understandably, displeased at not being informed, but that she is proceeding to MedStar."

"Hopefully she'll be able to help. McGee, what about Scalici?"

McGee figures that the 'pulling of rank' will occur within the next fifteen seconds, so for that time he'll focus on the loud 'Puppet Master'.

"He hasn't called for a Lawyer. The parents contacted one, I got a call, but when I told Scalici he refused. Said he doesn't need one."

"He thinks he's smarter than we are."

"He does."

"You just let him keep thinking that for now. You and Palmer stay on him and ID that girl. You contact the other people on that hit list?"

"Barely begun."

"By the time we get back."

"Yes, sir."

But when Gibbs turns around, Ziva is not there.

"That took about as long as I thought it would," Tim says.

xxx

Ziva steps into Ob 2, the dimly lit Observation Room for whatever transpires through the large one-way mirror as seen from I2. Through the glass, in the lighted room where only a mirror is seen with this room's lights down, brunette Socialite Janet 'Janette' Vancer is getting a crash course in the consequences of a life of crime.

The woman, shackled and cuffed with a chain binding the restraints to her waist, still wears the scarlet, button-less half-blouse loosely tied under her breasts and the scorching hot pants that she'd been captured in.

Special Agent Darrhonn is talking to her, but not very forcefully. She decides the man needs a course in 'Interrogation 901'.

Under other circumstances, Ziva might address the man at the controls to her left cordially. This time she just gives a slashing motion across her throat and walks out. She doesn't care if the man correctly interprets the gesture as a signal to stop recording what transpires inside or whether he takes it as a threat of what will happen to him if he fails to comply.

She moves a few feet down the orange cinder-block hall and opens the door. Agent Darrhonn looks to her, doubtlessly surprised by the intrusion. "Take a break."

x

He stands, approaches her closely, tall enough that his lips are beside her ear. "Ziva, I know how you feel, believe me I do, but the Director said she wants our team to do this one."

She pitches her own voice as low. This is not an enemy, this is a friend, but she takes his arm firmly. "Ben, the break can be wherever you wish."

He pulls back, and in his eyes she sees his understanding. He nods and walks out, closes the door behind him. She feels a pang of regret, but it vanishes when she turns to Vancer.

The woman looks up at her and quite obviously struggles for a brave mask, but Ziva's known the brave and the fearful and this woman has no ometz lev.

"There's been a mistake."

"If by mistake you mean you did not know who you attacked and expected to be in a DC Metro Police Station with their rules and courtesies and lawyers and not deep under a Federal Investigation Headquarters, then you are correct. You have made a tragic mistake. But do not worry, it shall be one of your very last."

"I'm not confessing anything."

"I am not interested in your confession," she says as she slowly rounds the table; her manner, her gait, that of a lioness with prey that's already been brought down, never to escape.

"You're not?"

x

Ziva knows Vasser has felt the first almost teasing sting of claws. There will be more before this prey succumbs. She steps out of the woman's sight. Vasser looks to her right, but Ziva's not there.

"The man you attacked is a Federal Special Agent." Vasser is still trying to find her. Ziva bends low, her lips to Vasser's left ear and her quiet words make the woman jump. "He is my partner."

Ziva's tone was weighted with death and still she stands just barely in sight. Vasser must strain in her restraints to see a portion of her. Whichever way Vasser turns, Ziva leans slightly to the opposite side.

"You shall tell me what you used on Special Agent DiNozzo." She bends close again. "And you shall tell me now."

She grabs Vasser's left arm and forces it out and onto the table, leans onto it, the woman's right one dragged with it by the short chain. Ziva's left thumb presses upon a nerve cluster in Vasser's forearm.

"What are you doing?" Vasser demands, wincing.

x

"You are a sad little debutant," Ziva says into her right ear. "I know all about you, Janet. Newspapers, Hammermill Paper, Harvard, Zeta Phi, none of which has prepared you for the trouble you are in." She applies a little more pressure with her thumb. It doesn't take much for Vasser to cry out and try to pull away, but Ziva keeps her arms locked to the tabletop, "or the methods that we shall use to break you."

"Let me go! You can't do this. You're not allowed to hurt me!"

"It is a pity for you that I am not an American Agent. I am Mossad." She reaches with her right hand for Vasser's side, her fingers seeking the woman's ribs.

"What's that? Leave me alone. Don't touch me. Let me go."

"Israeli _Secret _Service. The ones who _protect _Israel." She presses hard into Vasser's ribs and onto her forearm. The pain is so intense the woman can't draw breath to scream. "We fought off the Hezbollah, the Arab nations, cowed Egypt into an alliance, we have our own way of doing things."

She doesn't believe Vasser spent much time paying attention in College. Vasser's face is reddening and Ziva switches her right hand to the woman's shoulder, seeks the proper point on her clavicle. "There will be no marks, you will never be able to prove I did anything," she increases pressure on her arm, "but you _will _tell me what you used and the antidote."

She squeezes hard and Vasser's shriek nearly deafens her.


	4. Rule 34

Chapter Four  
Rule 34

Gibbs watches the Interrogation of Janet Vasser from the Observation Room. He has given Ziva twenty minutes, as much as he can risk without bringing official notice of the halted recording. Satisfied that she's gotten as much as Vasser is able to give, he crosses between the rooms and opens the Interrogation Room door.

Janet 'Jannette' Vasser is seated, elbows propped up onto the table, sobbing into her hands. Ziva stands behind her and she turns to the open door. No words need pass between them. The only sound is pitiful sobbing.

Gibbs signals for her to come out. Ziva lays a hand upon a well worked spot on Vasser's shoulder and the trembling woman flinches, her cry a bleat of abject terror. Ziva bends to whisper something and the woman goes stiff as the color drains from her face.

When Ziva steps out and closes the door behind her, she snaps the rarely used lock in place and knows how it will work on her victim.

"She claims not to know the poison."

"I know."

"I shall break her."

"I've got someone you can break."

x

He's holding a large bulging black plastic bag but, aside from size and shape, she can determine nothing about it's contents and shows him her 'I do not care what it is' face. But she follows him - no one ever precedes Gibbs - toward the Holding Cells. "Scalici?"

The matter of John Scalici is far less satisfying because, under the watered down American Legal system she's now to be forced to endure - no more friendly and cooperative monitor, the Holding Cells have automatic systems - they actually have very little provable information they can use against Scalici for the murders of Margaret Tragule and Seaman Recruit Julia Hennessy or for the attempted murder of Paula Massey or for conspiracy to murder Corporal Juliette Spencer.

It seems evident that Scalici, whether the prime mover or not, worked with an equally young or younger blonde girl. And while his role, so far as McGee's investigation of Scalici's computer seems to indicate, is to impersonate lonely and harmless men to lure in the victims, it's the unknown 'Puppet Mistress' who sent the multitude of emails designed to manipulate the unknown Stooges into believing they are communicating with suicidal women bent upon being raped and beaten to death as a condition of their first dates.

Scalici played the role of the innocent man seeking a date with the unwitting victims, and if NCIS goes to an ADA with the evidence on the seized computer, all they can prosecute him for is, at best, conspiracy.

Ziva grants that she knows no one is as careful as they think they are 100 percent of the time, and McGee will ultimately find much to be used in evidence as he delves deeper into the computer - and psyche - of their main suspect, but short-handed as they are, stressed and pressed for time as they are, she wishes Tony were here and safe.

x

Tony, as often as he may play the disarming fool - and occasionally may be the fool with women - understands the psychology of dating, if only of American woman and not Israeli, and what it takes to charm women into that first date.

But Tony, whom she has to admit, and is willing to do so when not in his presence or in circumstances where he will hear about it later, is the best Investigator on the team short of Gibbs, who's now leading her down the long orange corridor. But Tony is in MedStar hospital, poisoned by those two klavtas whose throats she cannot even rip out.

"What is in the bag?" She has given him all the show of patience she intends. If she is to be removed from obtaining useful answers that will potentially save Tony, she intends to show no more.

He opens the bag, pulls out enough of a pink stretch top for her to recognize it as being evidence in another case. She pulls the bag from his hand, opens it fully and finds a not-quite-matching pair of pink slacks. So far as she can recall, these are not from the same case, quite evidently came from Evidence Holding, and his thoughts are as obvious as the Nike swoosh embroidered over the left breast.

"I do not know which I find more disturbing, that you believe I would wear this or that you would take it from Evidence just to -."

"Rule 34."

"'Never torture a prisoner physically, do it to his head'." She removes the offensive garments from the bag. They are more distasteful in the whole than they'd been in part. She doesn't bother to try to stare him down, she's never won such a contest. "Very well." She shoves them back in. "But if McGee or Tony ever see this footage, you will think your Recruit Training was a honeymoon."

"Already had one that was worse."

xxx

John Scalici's Holding Cell is on the same lower level, far left rear, but Ziva had to make a detour before they could continue the short journey. This cell, like the others, is dull black concrete walls, floor and ceiling with a single bulb recessed deep into the ceiling. Designed for 100 percent gloominess, it's the first line of psychological intimidation. After several hours in this black steel doored cell, suspects are occasionally grateful for the Interrogation to begin.

Gibbs is in a mood to not let John Scalici be grateful. In fact, he has very definite intent to make the manipulative young man very unhappy indeed.

One of the ways he will do so is to place the chauvinistic man not under his own mercy, but under a weak, insignificant and unimpressive woman - Ziva David.

But it is a Ziva David who initially had intense motive for being in a bad mood. The outfit she must now wear, too small on the top and too stretchy skin tight on the lower half, puts her in a worse mood than she'd been at her failure to obtain the antidote to the poison used on her partner.

x

Ziva walks into the midnight black cell. When Scalici sees her in the too snug pink that accents every inch of her body his eyes open to three consecutive widths.

"Is something wrong?" she asks, playing oblivious as she sits in the only black folding chair. Scalici had been caught on his feet, now he must stand as she sits before him. Usually their positions would be reversed, she taking the dominant position, but this is more effective. By sitting down, she forces him to stand like an errant schoolboy dragged down to the Principal's office.

Sometimes Rule 34 can be fun. This time the fun will be in how well she can torture this bastard even prior to using her hands.

"No," he says and tries to look away, but can manage less than three seconds. The cloth shirt is not particularly low cut but since she doesn't have it tucked down but allows it to mold under her breasts, even without a cuff she can watch his blood pressure rise.

"What do you want?" Scalici demands.

"Your testicles on a skillet and your penis in a meat grinder." He'd tried for and immediately lost any perceived upper hand. "But if I must I shall settle for a complete confession and the identity and location of your accomplice."

She could not have derailed him any harder with C4 under his tracks and she enjoys watching the wreckage of his mind pile high.

"F*ck you."

It's an attempt at bravado that doesn't even seem good for Summer Stock. "You are unlikely to get a firm enough erection or sustain it long enough to get my attention."

xx

"Ohhhh, that was narsty," Tom Gordon says as he adjusts the controls on the Security system. Gibbs, standing behind him in Ob 1 down the hall, laughs silently behind Gordon's back. Even in black and white display they can see the color rise in Scalici's face.

/Listen, you bitch, you don't ever insult John's manhood or John will rip you apart./

"Does he always refer to himself in the third person?" Gordon wants to know. Gibbs only nods, the motion unseen. It had been slightly disconcerting in yesterday's interrogation. "Must get a bit confusing."

"Not really. Both of him are bastards."

xx

"You'd better let me out of here. You have no right to kidnap me."

Ziva doesn't bother to point out 'we did not kidnap you, we arrested you'. The man has been playing the kidnap card since they took him down yesterday on his own front lawn and it is getting tiring.

Actually, the agents had not taken him down upon his family's front lawn, they'd picked him up from it. The man, seeing himself confronted by four Agents positioned to cut off any escape attempt, had charged Michelle Palmer, being a woman and the smallest of them. She'd met the bull rush with a classic Tomoe Nage judo move that had left him flat upon his back attempting to remember how to breathe.

"You and your accomplice impersonated men and women on Dating sites. While you pretended to be men communicating with your victims in the hopes of establishing romantic liaisons, your counterpart sent messages to gullible men that indicated the women you targeted wanted to be raped and beaten to death."

"I must be a very bad man."

"You then maneuvered the men into being dupes who murdered the women."

"That sounds like quite a fantasy."

"If so, it is a fantasy scenario you have played out numerous times, leaving an irregular trail of dead women throughout the District."

"Fascinating. And why would John do that?"

"You will tell me."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." She won't answer. Now that she's laid out the knowledge they have, she remains silent.

She's known this boy/man's kind so often. He's a boaster and boasters have to boast, even when they insist they have no idea what the subject is about. She's known some to talk themselves into a Conviction.

She keeps the silence until finally he can stand it no longer.

"Why don't I make it easy for you? If I'm doing all this, and I'm not about to admit I am, why don't you just meet me on-line and I'll scare up a really gruesome death for you at the hands of one of your bastard partners?"

x

Unfortunately, this is useless. He's only rephrasing the information she's already given him. "Who is your accomplice?"

"Eat me."

"I doubt very much that you would enjoy the experience." But she puts the bloody yet satisfying image on hold for later. She leans forward, letting her breasts lead the way. Watching his face, she thinks Tony would have something to say about shooting carp in a basket. "We have your computer, we have your email records -"

"What email records?"

She wants to put her fist through his smirk. "- and we will learn, from you, everything we wish to know."

"Nope. You won't. You're letting me out of this hell hole and then the next knock you hear at your door, bitch, is going to be a stranger with a steel pipe who's going to shatter every bone in your body and leave pieces of you on each of your partners' doorsteps, so get your moldy cunt out of here."

xx

Ziva leans back again, shoulders well back. Scalici very likely thinks her smile is for him, it's actually for the camera high to her left side.

In the monitor room, Gibbs smiles back to the image.

"I love the stupid ones," he assures Gordon.

xx

Ziva doesn't fight Scalici's stare on her breasts. She wants it there. Breasts have sent more strong willed and intelligent men down in flames than anything else in history and Scalici is neither of these. In fact, she has her doubts he can even lay claim to the title of man.

She allows herself slightly deeper than normal breaths, pacing herself on holding each intake for a moment so that the motion is neither excessive nor one that will ultimately make her light-headed. She allows the stare, and the thoughts so evident behind them, because in the end the fall will be that much harder.

"What does it get you to hurt these women?" she asks after ten calculated breaths.

"What?" he asks a few seconds too late. She looks down, apparently for the first time noticing the attention of his eyes. The shirt was too tight for her to allow her to keep her bra, and tucked under her breasts the material molds so well she might as well have body-painted her breasts pink. She even allows, by technique of will long mastered, her nipples to firm enough to poke against the material.

If he were that carp in a basket and she were armed with a bazooka, it would be a fairer fight.

"Why do you do it?"

"Do what?" he asks too late, his stare locked on her nipples. She can virtually hear the material in his pants straining.

This is not her normal technique, certainly not a preferred one, but it is starting to be fun.

She must be careful, however. The spell she is allowing him to weave upon himself is a fragile thing. She would have asked 'why do you kill?', but his natural reaction would jump start his brain, and that is not the head she wants him to think with.

"Work with a girl, when it is so clear what you truly want."

"What's that?"

She takes a breath the designer of the shirt had conceived it for best effect, leans forward and hunches her shoulders slightly. His eyes look like they want to jump out and plaster themselves upon her breasts. Her long breath nearly sets off the fire sprinklers. "A woman."

xx

Gibbs enjoys watching an artist at work. Despite her protestations, Ziva is clearly taking Rule 34 to heart and he settles in to enjoy the show.

His cell phone rings.

He looks with masked regret at the screen; this call he can't click off. "Yes, Director?" There are several titles he could have chosen, he'll keep to the formal one.

/What news do you have?/

"I'll be right up." He bluffs better face to face. No matter which case she'll ask him about, Scalici or DiNozzo, it's the wrong one.

Casting a look at the turkey shoot, he departs. He'll watch the tape, though it never compares well with live theater.

xxx

Ruby Rae sets the last of the samples in the centrifuge which will rotate the tubes so quickly it will force separate any microscopic particles present in the liquid Andrea Harper and Janet Vancer were forcing into Special Agent DiNozzo's veins. She wishes Abby Sciuto were here, but all the numbers the woman left her with go immediately to voice-mail. The scientist's certainly already on her way, she knows that Abby's devotion to her friends is legendary, but until Abby arrives she's on her own.

She presses the activation button and the six secured test tubes spin about the central axis so fast the individual vials disappear into a blurred disk.

"What have you got?" comes from two inches behind her, well above her head and her scream barely gets held down to an '_eeek_!' She whirls into the tie of a tall man and when she looks up its into the Mount Rushmore face of her least pleasant nightmare.

It's one thing to be the shortest person in the room, she's accepted that long ago, but this man's habit of being right on her makes her feel she far too often turns to bump her nose on a cliff.

"Oh, Asian Gebbs - I mean Agent Gibbs." She takes a step back, right into the centrifuge, and tries to compose herself. "The Gas Chromatascope was inconclusive-" she raises her hands defensively, tries to edit out the gaff. "I mean I couldn't identify the poison with it. I'm hoping an Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay test will yield a better answer. I'm preparing the next sample for the Mass Spectrometer; I'm hoping I can - I mean _it _can - identify the particles."

"How long?"

Why is this his favorite question? And what was Abby thinking? Edenvale has car thefts, not exotic poisons. She'd done well on those two bullet tests last time but _really_. Okay, she knows Tim McGee recommended her over the Forensic Scientist Abby'd chosen the last time she took a Leave more than a year ago - and she's happy to see Tim again - _even though he is _married now - but why does the whole McGee package have to come with _this _man?

"Well, that's a bit hard to say. It's not like the elements are distinct; they're pretty well - that is whatever this is - is pretty well homogenized into the mix -."

"Try."

"About an hour?" She tries to make it sound unlike an utterly vague guess and utterly fails.

Thank God his cell phone takes just this moment to ring! He pulls it out of his pocket, flips it open. "Yeah, it's Gibbs."

The half-distorted voice barely carries the foot between them but she can just make out /This is Doctor Kramer at MedStar. You wanted me to call you when Mr. DiNozzo regained consciousness./

"I'll be right there." He closes the phone but she's not safe yet. "Have answers by the time I get back."

"Yes, sir," she answers with very dry mouth, but he's already walking away.

When he's gone and the room is quiet save for the whirring of the spinning centrifuge, she leans back against the substantial machine with a whoosh of relief. "Thank you, Ma Bell."

xxx

Fifteen minutes after Special Agent Gibbs had left the building Michelle Palmer steps off the elevator on the Autopsy level, relieved to be on her break. Gibbs had left Ziva with what will likely be a several hours long interrogation of John Scalici and updated them by phone that Special Agent DiNozzo is awake - tremendous relief - but he'd taken no one with him.

She's sure Ziva must have been aggravated. Tim was definitely annoyed to hear the update indirectly. He'd wanted to go, but she doesn't want to consider being trapped in the limited space of a car with Gibbs until DiNozzo's back at his desk and aggravating her.

'Maybe Jimmy and I can grab an early lunch upstairs.' But that hope is crushed as the large metal and glass pneumatic doors slide apart and she finds her husband and Dr. Maura Isles clad shoulder to foot in blue scrubs, faces covered by masks and plastic head shields, their gloved hands wrist deep in the chest of a naked man.

Nonetheless, she tries for a bright tone that in no way suits her mood. "Hi, honey. Doctor Isles."

Jimmy, facing toward her across the corpse, looks up, evidently quite surprised. "'Chelle?"

Isles looks back over her shoulder. Though a clear plastic shield covers her face, a spatter of something off-red that she doesn't want to consider had evidently squirted under it and onto the woman's blue cloth mask and had been smeared aside. "Special Agent Palmer?" She doesn't sound thrilled to see her. "Is there something we can do for you?"

Her tone says clearly 'I'm not ready with a report and this isn't your team's case.'

"No. Just visiting." She doesn't want to go into what happened upstairs earlier. Jimmy's eyes show that he understands what stresses burden her. Last night she'd cried in his arms, she's not going to today.

"Oh." Isles turns back, but not quite to the body. Apparently there's a communication with her husband that she can't see, but though Jimmy looks a bit uncomfortable he doesn't say anything.

x

Emboldened, Michelle steps closer, peers from the head of the table into the well lighted body by aid of the large lamp directly over the spread torso.

It's not at all pleasant to look into a chest lacking heart and lungs and soon to lack a great deal more. This is why she doesn't like to visit Jimmy while he's working. Then again, Gibbs normally obtains his reports in person, sparing her - and likely the others as well - the risk of losing their lunch. She'd actually come down hoping to go to lunch with Jimmy, but now no longer feels particularly hungry.

Then, looking anywhere but into the corpse, her eyes light upon the tray of surgical instruments laid out on the white cloth covered tray to Jimmy's right near the corpse's long haired head. The silver tools gleam in the bright lamplight.

Isles looks at her again and, before she can be told to move away - or to vacate the room completely, something Ducky wouldn't be so rude as to do - she crosses the room to where more sterile instruments are laid out beside the sterilizer. She looks over the implements for a moment and picks up one of three scalpels. She removes the plastic safety cap that covered the blade, sets it with the other blades, turns and crosses the room again, the razor-sharp silver tool pointed toward Jimmy's back.

x

As she draws close, Maura Isles looks up. "What are you doing?"

"Oh," she steps around her husband, stops beside him and tells him "I noticed you didn't have a scalpel. I was just bringing you one."

Jimmy lifts his right hand from deep in the thoracic cavity of the still man, wiggles the tool tipped with blood. Under the clear plastic shield she can read his smile in his cheekbones beyond his cloth covered mouth and nose.

"Oh." She looks to the tray on his other side, trying not to look as foolish as she feels. Like he'd forget a scalpel.

"We can't use that," Isles tells her through her own mask and face shield.

"Why not?"

"Because you're holding it in your bare hand. It's no longer sterile."

She glances at the open body - as though she has to check? - then back up to the woman. "But isn't he dead?"

It's a strange look Isles gives her. "We may have to send more samples up to the lab. We can't have any foreign germs added."

"Oh. Okay." She glances about, uncertain what to do with the tool. "Sorry."

She crosses back to the table, picks up the plastic cover and slips it back over the razor sharp blade.

x

"Honey?" Jimmy calls.

She turns. He's looking back over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"What do you want?"

She knows what's behind this question. She rarely visits, and never stays when he and Ducky are working. This is, in fact, the longest she's ever stayed here with an open body being worked upon. Usually they're sewn up by the time she...

She crosses back, slipping the protected blade into the pocket of her brown vest. "I was hoping we could have an early lunch together." But she can see, looking into the half eviscerated body, how likely this is. He rarely talks in detail about his work and most times she doesn't want details, but this doesn't look like they're nearly finished.

"I'm sorry, honey." She looks up through the mask into his hazel eyes, sees real regret there. "It's probably going to have to be a late lunch. Sorry."

"No, that's okay." She goes around the table, heads for the door.

"Honey?" She turns back just before her proximity would open the doors. "You okay?"

"Fine. Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you. I'll see you later." She escapes through the sliding doors and presses the elevator call button before she can feel anything.

xxx

Gibbs enters MedStar's Intensive Care Unit, shield case in hand. This shift doesn't know him and he doesn't intend to allow any delay in seeing DiNozzo. There are three Nurses in the room, two at patients' beds but he spots DiNozzo on a bed at the left wall, possibly asleep, before the women see him. When Tony had been near death from Yersinia Pestis Plague he hadn't looked this bad.

There's a Doctors/Nurses' Station a few feet in from the door and he makes a direct line for the woman who, in this moment, isn't working with a patient. "Nurse," he shows his IDs, "Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS. You have one of our Agents here, Anthony DiNozzo." With a tilt of his head, he indicates the agent.

"Yes. One moment." She looks back to where DiNozzo lies surrounded by beeping monitors and tethered to two IV tubes into which drip clear liquids. It's too reminiscent of last night, but Gibbs knows these concoctions won't hurt Tony. The white garbed woman gets up, steps out of the enclave through the open left side and leads him across the room.

"What's his condition?" he asks as they reach the foot of the bed. Tony's covered to his chest, the white blanket not interfering with the IV tubes or monitor leads, but Tony's too still.

"I'm sorry; I'm not at liberty to say." Her tone tells him the rest; 'I won't answer so don't ask again.'

It's okay, he'll get the answer from DiNozzo.

DiNozzo looks pale in his light blue gown and Gibbs is uncertain about disturbing the man's rest, but the nurse has no such hesitation and gently touches his left shoulder.

"Mister DiNozzo, can you hear me?" Tony turns his head toward the voice. "You have a visitor."

Tony doesn't open his eyes. "Touch me again, I'll rip your damn arm off and shove it down your throat."

x

The woman looks up to Gibbs, her eyes say the response wasn't unexpected.

Gibbs, however, is quite surprised by his partner's shocking words and surly tone. He can't remember DiNozzo ever addressing an attractive woman in any way not designed to increase attraction. "Hey, Tony, how you feeling?"

Tony opens his eyes, fixes him with a glare.

"Great; another nosy bastard." Gibbs stares, unable to believe his friend's anger. "_Well_? What the _fuck _are you staring at?"


	5. I Didn't Do It!

Chapter Five  
I didn't do it

There's little that can reduce Leroy Jethro Gibbs to speechlessness. Though never the most loquacious man, he usually fights through shock to stay on top of most situations, but Tony DiNozzo's belligerent demand has silenced him. It does not quiet the Senior Field Agent.

"Well? What are you? _Stupid_? I asked you what the fuck you're staring at."

"DiNozzo?"

"Oh, no, you're not staring at me." His voice rises and he pushes himself up onto his left elbow. "Just who the hell do you think you are, disturbing me?" Gibbs doesn't have an answer, but DiNozzo has one ready at hand. "I'll tell you who you are," and the rage on his face is terrible as he spits the accusation. "You're the _bastard _who _stole _my job."

"What're you–?"

"I was Team _Leader_. You quit and left me holding the ball and I did a _damn _good job and you couldn't stand it so you and your back door whore Jenny, you two did one of your behind-closed-doors, joined-at-the-pelvis deals and I was demoted back to Senior Field when I should still be the top dog!" He pushes himself further up, swings one bare leg off the bed.

An alarm, a recorded call for aid blasts in from the outside corridor and there are two nurses with them. The women restrain DiNozzo as the woman who'd escorted him turns to Gibbs. "Sir, you'll have to le–"

The sharp sound of flesh on flesh precedes a sharp cry and one of the women trying to restrain Tony flies backward to sprawl to the floor. Gibbs spots a gush of blood between the woman's protecting hands as the conflict moves on to DiNozzo and the third nurse. DiNozzo's seated on the bed and should be at the disadvantage but he's a trained fighter and the nurse's concern is not to injure her patient.

x

Other white clad men and women hurry into the ICU to join the fray but Gibbs is closer and knows that DiNozzo, linked to two IV units, will fare too well against medical personnel who strive to help him without injuring him.

Gibbs has a thousand combat techniques but none are more appropriate than to push the struggling woman aside, fling his arms tightly about his raging friend, trap his arms, clamp his fingers together behind the man and squeeze hard.

It's an uneven battle. Despite strength honed by combat and heavy work, hands empowered by woodwork, the raging agent nearly breaks his hold, almost powers out of his grip.

But there are many people working about them and in under a minute DiNozzo's strength fades, then vanishes. As Gibbs eases his own force, several hands lower Tony back onto the bed. As he backs away from the seven men and women who work to stabilize the quiescent man, Gibbs sees that one of the women holds an expended hypodermic syringe which she's just withdrawn from a medication shunt in the tube of clear liquid inches from DiNozzo's arm.

Glancing back, he sees the woman DiNozzo had struck being assisted to her feet, a bloody white cloth held to her face.

x

But now that the excitement is past and two women are left to settle DiNozzo and check the connections to his two IVs, it's far past time for answers. He'll get them from the suited and white coated man who, by manner and bearing, seems to be in charge. "Why did he do that?"

"He's been surly and aggressive since he woke up, but not violent. Is he always like that?"

"Gentlest guy you'll know." He feels no guilt in the hyperbole. He's talking about the day-by-day DiNozzo, not the Agent-in-a-shootout DiNozzo, though what the man seems to have been harboring for the year-and-a-half plus...

"We're told that's not an example of his normal behavior, so it's probably a good clue as to whatever he was exposed to."

"What?"

"We don't know yet."

Gibbs realizes he can't treat these people as he does his Team. He can virtually hear Abby Sciuto's voice ringing in his mind. 'You can't rush science.'

"As soon as you know, Doctor."

"You'll be called back."

But it'll be a short trip, from the lounge or wherever because his team can work on Scalici and the unknown 'Puppet Mistress' as well as track down all those duped murderers together with a dozen Police forces. He's not going anywhere.

x

The determination to remain is capped when he opens the door and Dr. Jeanne Benoit is on the other side. "You've seen him?" bursts from her lips.

"What's going on?"

There's no way for her to mask her distress. "It's not narcotic, not hallucinogenic, it's nothing I've ever seen. It's like something inverted his personality. He's like a..." Words fail her.

They do the same to him.

xxx

Michelle Palmer pays the Cashier for her lunch and thoughtlessly pushes the bills into her wallet, her mind on too many things. Special Agent DiNozzo, John Scalici locked up in Holding undergoing a marathon Interrogation by Ziva David, the mysterious accomplice having only a short time left. 'Ziva will break him, and then we'll settle those two.'

If necessary, she'll step in with some Wiccan magic that'll have what's left of those bitches begging to confess just to get it to stop.

Pushing down the burst of resentful anger, she carries her tray from the end of the sales station, not really hungry but using the break time to get out of Operations. Having passed up most of the solid food choices and not finding even her favorite variety of chilled vegetables particularly appealing, she stopped at the soup tureens and chose a chicken / noodle / vegetable concoction, slowly scooping up the hottest mixture from the bottom and adding to the selection an extra large hot tea.

'It'll probably take forever to get cool enough to drink,' she thinks as she walks with her tray into the dining section, searching for an empty table. 'I really don't want to go back down, there's no news and everybody's just–'

She's paid no attention to the tray or her fingertip grip under its lips until she feels it slip off her right fingers and the large boiled soup and larger tea fall directly upon Tina Larsen!

x

Startled gasps from both women are cut as the scalding liquids drive Tina from her chair with piercing shrieks. Michelle's horrified at the price of her inattention. The blonde woman's face, chest and lap took the full force of the once boiling concoctions and she screams over and over, pulls at her blouse, scrabbles at her face as Michelle drops the useless tray which clatters to the floor under the screams.

Noodles and vegetables fly to the floor off Tina's blouse and skirt as a dozen men and women converge on them, each trying to help. Tina rips her ruined blouse open to get the hot material away from her, a limited gesture as even her bra had a moment to absorb the scalding shower.

Bob Magade pours a large glass of something iced upon her chest, the cubes bouncing off her to the floor as others fan her with anything available.

"I'm sorry! I'm _sorry_!" Michelle cries, only beginning to realize she's been saying it over and over, the apology as useless to the scalded woman as all the other belated efforts to save her. "Tina, I'm sorry! It was an accident!"

But the woman's barely aware of her. Tina's skirt is also covered with wet fragments and too much boiled liquid, but the material allows her bare legs some safety as it doesn't press upon her.

x

"Take her to Medical," Supervisory Special Agent Fred Higgins commands Janet Levy from Kevin Lamb's team, his authoritative voice cutting through the melee.

"No, I'm okay," Tina says, breathless and shaken, unable to see her red face, though she continues to flap the material of her buttonless blouse about her red chest. Her bra covers enough to keep her with fair coverage but it too is wet and stained and probably contributed too much to still unseen burns.

"I'm _sorry_!" Michelle exclaims again, clutching her hand.

"It's okay," Tina assures, an automatic response to unreasonable circumstance.

"Levy, I gave you an order."

"But–"

"Christina, right now your nerves are shut down but in about a minute you're going to start to feel how burned you are. Go."

"Tina, I'm sorry," Michelle says plaintively even as the woman's hand is pulled from hers and she's bustled away by Levy, together with Jean Mantner and Peggy Uchitel. The remaining agents either set about cleaning up or return to their lunches. Michelle, staring after her, can only say 'I'm sorry' though Larsen's nearly out of range. The wounded agent lifts a placating hand before she's hurried out the door.

Michelle realizes when they're gone that she's still shaking, and stares helplessly in the direction of the departed women until Higgins steps into her eye line. She looks up into his grim visage.

"Special Agent Palmer, a word if you please."

x

Rather than remaining, he leads her out into the hallway and several yards past the elevators, then turns back to her. "Special Agent Palmer, have you some issue with Special Agent Larsen you'd like to discuss?"

"Issue?" She stares up at the tall man, unable to imagine the point of this question.

"Some problem between the two of you?"

"No, sir, there's no problem."

He seems to be straining for patience. "Then why did you do it?"

"I'm sorry, sir. 'Do it'?"

"You dumped that tray of hot liquid all over Christina Larsen."

"_No, sir_!" How could he say that? "I _didn't_. It slipped out of my hand, sir. It - it was an _accident_. I didn't mean to–" She halts at his upraised hand.

"Palmer, I was looking right at you. You were carrying the tray, paused right next to her, glanced at her as though aiming and overturned the entire tray on top of her."

"I DIDN'T! It was an _accident_! You saw it - it slipped out of my hand!"

He's staring intently at her.

"You've got to _believe _me! It _slipped_."

"Palmer, I watched you–"

"No! You _couldn't _have. It _slipped_. I swear it did. I'd never hurt Tina. She's my friend."

x

A long moment, he's evidently working for ... something. Finally he says, his voice firm but quite steady: "Palmer, I'm not sure what you're thinking, but if there is an issue, some reason for you to do this, I'm giving you a last chance to resolve it. But you have got to come clean right now."

"Sir, I swear to the _Goddess _I'm telling you the truth. I was walking, holding my tray, looking for a table and it slipped out of my hand. I did _not _'dump' it; it slipped and fell."

More long staring. Finally: "All right, Palmer, you're dismissed."

"Thank you, sir."

She tries not to look like she's hurrying away from the man, but though she'd been shaking before, she now trembles more violently and realizes it's from both fear and shock.

How could he _say _that to her?

xxx

Gibbs has been sitting at a convenient seat with Jeanne Benoit, watching the comings and goings of doctors, nurses and an assortment of people for too long. Many time reinforced patience born mainly of a desire not to interrupt Tony's treatment finally breaks and he leaves the woman behind.

"Where are you going?"

Never having any love of stupid questions, he ignores this one, mainly for the sake of the couple.

He pushes the door out of his way and walks through the Intensive Care Unit, making more progress toward DiNozzo's bed than he'd expected to before he's intercepted.

"I'm sorry, you can't–"

"I'm his physician," comes from his left, a flicker glance takes in Beniot. She identifies herself with the clipped tones of a hurried professional, gaining immediate cooperation. "What's his condition?"

From here Gibbs can see his condition too well. He's too still under the blanket drawn up to his chest, but his arms are exposed.

"I'm sorry, doctor, his condition is Critical."

"What happened?"

"He's been poisoned, but thus far we don't know with what. He received a very large dose. We're trying to flush his system, he's received five units of whole blood. He's sedated because when he's awake he's abnormally aggressive."

Gibbs has seen this, and considers it a vital clue to whatever those women used on him. "What are his chances?"

"That's something you have to discuss with his doctor."

"What's your evaluation?"

"I don't have one."

He feels Benoit's hand on his arm. "I'll stay with him. You should find who did this."

"They're found."

"Then break them."

xxx

S.A. Carol Senise stops at the door to the appropriate Examining Room in the Navy Yard's Medical Center. Her shield has gotten her this far past Reception and the first Nurse she encountered, but gaining admittance to this room will require more tact.

Her knock is acknowledged by, fortunately, a friend. Doctor Alexandra Hartley's expression also softens and Carol knows she won't be put off.

"Doctor, I'm here to check on Special Agent Tina Larsen." The formality is hardly necessary, she can see the blonde woman seated on the examination table, stripped down to her bra, four feet from the door. However, an official bearing is more in keeping with her assignment.

"Come in," the woman says.

x

When the door is closed behind her she doesn't want to ask her fellow Agent the obvious question. Tina's face, neck, chest and stomach are livid from the burns inflicted by the scalding liquids. The marks aren't uniform, they paint an oddly shaped image.

Medicated cream, Carol doesn't know what type, covers Larsen's face, upper body and legs.

"How do you feel?" 'Okay, stupid question but I have to start _somewhere_.'

"Better," Larsen says, "thanks. It hurt like hell, but Dr. Hartley gave me something for the pain–"

"But I've barely begun my exam," Hartley reminds the women.

x

When she's done, a process that's not overlong "Not too bad as burns go, you were lucky."

"Everyone surrounded me and fanned me with trays and all else."

"That certainly would've helped. Well, you won't need skin grafts–"

"Thank God."

Hartley's smile fades. "But you're going to be hurting for quite a while. I'll prescribe some more cream, use it generously, but you should be all right in about a week. Limit sun exposure for a while, and come back if the pain doesn't fade."

"Thank you, Doctor."

x

When she's gone; "Tina, I have to ask you some questions about what happened."

"CYA for NCIS?"

"Not really. Fred's concerned about - something," she finishes too lamely.

"Something. Well, there's not a lot to tell. I was one moment finishing my lunch, the next I'm wearing Michelle's."

"And what was your sense of that moment?"

Tina looks at her quizzically. "A whole lotta, lotta pain."

"No, I mean..." This is so weird she can barely decide on the words.

Tina pulls on her stained - destroyed - blouse, tugging the sides together, making them overlap her chest. "Maybe you should say what you mean."

"I mean did you get the sense... that Agent Palmer did it intentionally?"

"_Nonsense_. Not only were there half a dozen people helping while I screamed - and flashed the room - but she was absolutely devastated. Kept apologizing over and over, and I could tell she was sincere."

"You're sure?"

Tina sighs sharply. "_Yes_, I'm sure. Not only are we friends but Michelle would've failed on this year's Undercover Evaluation if Craig Dennis hadn't spotted her some points. No way would she do this and be able to lie about it."

xxx

Gibbs closes the Interrogation Room's door and puts a file folder upon the table before taking a seat opposite Andrea Harper. Ziva's interrogation of Vancer made it clear Harper is the boss of this team of murderesses, while a search of past incidents make this a serial killer case.

In fact, he'd been quite impressed when McGee had laid out the results of a search for similar cases. Those had not resulted in arrests, but the cases were so similar he's convinced they had all been done by this pair.

Harper is considerably worse for having spent several hours being grilled by SSA Paulsen's team, but they haven't broken her.

He intends to shatter her.

x

He slides from the closed folder an 8x10 color Autopsy photo, the goriest example of the Y cut, spread torso procedure.

"Martin Mahood, Virginia Beach, 11 months ago, poisoned with cyanide. Left a wife and three children 4 and twins 2."

He slides out another photo, this with most of the organs already removed from the excavated cadaver. "Sam Hitoch, Hagerstown Maryland, 8 months ago, suffocated from a dose of succinylcholine. Married less than a year.

A third photo no less stunning. "William Grenfeld, 3 months ago, you used azelea on him. His wife had a heart attack brought on by the news." A finale autopsy photo joins the others. Her heart and lungs have already been removed en bloc.

Through all these revelations he's watched Harper piercingly and her growing smile tells him enough. "Proud of yourself, aren't you?"

"They got what they deserved. Well, except her, that was unintentional."

"Why'd they deserve it?"

"Hanging out in bars, cheating on their wives. You should have seen how easy it was to lure them. Offer a cock two willing women and he'll follow anywhere it points."

"So you're doing it for the wives?" This is far more than Paulsen's people got, but they hadn't displayed trophies.

"Yes," she assures him with a proud smile.

"Visiting vengeance?"

"Exactly."

He touches the woman's photo. "She was a wife."

"It broke her heart," she says, pleased with her pun.

x

He's heard enough to confirm Paulsen's initial report. No remorse over DiNozzo is one thing, this points straight to psychotic. He wishes he had Ducky here to fill in the pieces.

"What about DiNozzo?"

"Who?" she asks with a sly smile which self-destructs when Gibbs' hand crashes onto the table.

"The man you poisoned!" Gibbs knows he's not dispassionate, so what? This is his case. "He's a bachelor. That means he's not married. No wife!"

"Well," she grins, "what can I say? We can be forgiven one goof."

x

"What did you use?"

The smile spreads more widely. "Use?"

Gibbs gathers the photos back into the folder, gets up and tucks the folder under his arm, yanks the door open and gets through it.

Paulsen is waiting in the corridor. He slaps the folder into the man's stomach. "Break her."

"You okay?"

This is his day for ignoring stupid questions. He stalks down the orange corridor,

Ducky - or rather Isles - can get answers from a corpse. He can't.

xxx

Gibbs enters the bullpen, having very reluctantly given in to the facts related in a five-minute-ago phone call. DiNozzo had come out of sedation in no better a mood than when he'd gone in, had been sedated again and is expected to sleep through the coming night. McGee looks up and gives him his first good news of the day. He really needs this good news. "Boss, Ziva got the name of Scalici's accomplice and I've just confirmed it on his computer."

Gibbs turns expectantly to Ziva. He'd had no doubt that Ziva would break the idiot, it must have just happened or he'd have been notified on the way up. It doesn't matter when, or that McGee hadn't called before confirming it - proper procedure - just that they have it now.

"How'd you break him, Ziver?"

"I did not need to 'break' him in the way I wanted. I engaged him in multiple arguments and he gave up the name 'Mary' without realizing it by way of comparison. Apparently he found me wanting."

"I'd like to see that footage," Tim says.

"No you would not, McGee."

Gibbs knows that a year ago he would have seen it, back when he was 'Timmy' to her 'Zee', but there's no longer any possibility of that.

"Who is she, McGee?" Impatient at the best of times, Tony's condition weighs heavily.

"There's only one Mary mentioned in Scalici's computer, the only woman named that often other than victims. That's actually why a search for frequently repeated words failed. Unfortunately there were no names or email addresses of victims on his computer. He kept that one clean which is why he used public computers for the scams. But I did find a Mary. There were numerous exchanges–"

"McGee," the man's lucky there's a desk between them, "am I going to have to exchange my 401s for IRAs before you finish?"

"Yes, boss. I mean 'no, boss'. Her name is Mary Waghoff, I got her address, it's not far from Scalici's place."

He looks to his right. 'Chomping at the bit' is a good description of Ziva's posture. She's also back in her usual attire. "There's nothing in Scalici's computer?"

"No, boss."

"Got to be somewhere. Where's Palmer?"

"Lunch break."

He'll have her get a Search Warrant for Scalici's place, find a notebook, hell, a scrap of notepaper, but in the meantime three agents are more than enough to lasso one girl. "Gear up."

The words are hardly out of his mouth when his cell phone rings. He's surprised to look at the outer screen and find it's an upstairs internal number: MTAC. "Yeah, it's Gibbs."

/Jethro, Fred. I know you've got a lot on your plate and I wouldn't give you this if there were any way around it, but I wanted to cover it with you before it gets around./

"Sounds mysterious," he says with sharp impatience to his counterpart SSA

/Join me in MTAC./

He'd tell Higgins to forget it if not for the unusual quality to his tone and the unnecessarily cryptic message. He heads for the stairs. "McGee," he calls back, "you and Ziva pick up Waghoff."


	6. Unbelievable

Chapter Six  
Unbelievable

Michelle Palmer steps off the elevator into the alcove bordered by the glass and steel door to Autopsy. She's about to step close enough for her presence to be detected by the sensor mounted over the doors but she halts.

Inside the brightly lit room, Jimmy and Doctor Isles are again working on another cadaver. Or is it the same one? Autopsies can take hours, and much as she wants - needs - to see Jimmy, the sting of her last visit is still too fresh. The sting of Special Agent Higgins' accusation is fresher still. How could he accuse her of something so horrible? And she can't even put away some of the sting in discussing it with her husband.

She reaches for the door, pulls back.

Attention focused on their patient, neither the visiting ME nor her husband see her.

xxx

The summons to MTAC, mysterious and ill timed as it is, doesn't make Gibbs happy. It is, in fact, a despised interruption at a time when one of his cases is finally showing the prospect of progress.

When he opens the door he sees that the big screen in the well at the base of the incline shows a still image of the upstairs Café. There had better be a good explanation for that.

As he descends the ramp toward his counterpart, he sees the other man is grim, not his usual affable self.

On the screen, which shows the upstairs Café dining area upward toward the cashier stations and then partway into the food dispensation area at top, Gibbs can recognize the back of his friend's head. Fred Higgins seated near the lower right portion of the screen. The white Time Stamp on the lower right portion of the screen indicates that, whatever the issue is, it happened slightly more than twenty five minutes ago.

"There was an incident in the Café a little while ago that you need to see. Tina Larsen," Higgins says as he points to the blonde woman seated two rows upward and to the left of the SSA's position, her body facing the camera and the body of the dining area, "was scalded with hot soup and tea."

He's not sure why this should be of any interest other than concern for the woman's condition. He exchanges his 'so?' for "She okay?"

"First degree burns to her face, torso and legs. She's being treated in Yard Medical, doctor says she'll be okay in a few days. But I want you to see this." He signals to the operators at the left wall and the image begins to move.

x

Even when knowing an accident is about to happen and where to focus his attention, Gibbs finds the scene quite ordinary. He watches Michelle Palmer enter the Cashier station at the top of the screen, pay for her meal and carry her tray into the dining area. On her tray is a large white Styrofoam cup and bowl, undoubtedly the before mentioned soup and tea. At least now he knows where to focus his attention.

The image is too small for much detail but it appears from the slight turns of her head that Palmer is looking for a seat.

Knowing that something is to come, he expects to see a trip, slip, collision or some other minor flub with unfortunate consequences for the seated woman. He does not expect to see Palmer approach from behind Larsen, pause beside the woman, glance down at her and deliberately turn the tray over, scalding her with a considerable amount of hot liquid.

He's astounded at the deliberate act, barely believes the woman did what he just saw her do, and is glad there's no sound, for Larsen leaps to her feet, screaming. Palmer drops the tray to the floor, looks shocked, apparently honestly distressed as Larsen rips her blouse open and nearly a dozen agents converge upon the scene.

They fan her with trays and all else but their bodies obscure most of the detail. One agent splashes a cup full of liquid upon her; ice cubes bounce off the woman's chest as she continues screaming.

He can see Palmer at the far right of the throng, looking frantic, saying something most emphatically but it doesn't look like there's any anger such as might accompany so outrageous an act. She looks distressed, appears genuinely shocked by the incident, but there are too many people mingling into the scene, all trying to help, for him to see many details clearly.

x

As Gibbs watches, appalled as much as surprised by what his agent has done, the image of Higgins establishes order, sends three women off with the wounded Larsen out the bottom of the screen. Agents clean up the area or return to their places and Higgins steps in front of Palmer. They talk for several seconds, and then he leads her out through the bottom of the screen.

At a signal from Higgins to the console operator, the footage switches to the end of a hallway, the time stamp shows less than half a minute has passed as Higgins and Palmer step from the lower part of the screen about two thirds up to where Higgins halts them. He confronts the petite woman.

At first there's little motion between them and suddenly Palmer grows agitated, her face displays shock and confusion that quickly mount into outrage and denial. Her hand gestures grow sharp and emphatic but there's no anger on her face; it's incredulity.

The tension between them mounts and Palmer's distress grows, only to by brought under enforced control by Higgins. Finally she steps out of the bottom of the scene. There's an expression on her face he hasn't seen in about a year, the frightened rabbit look he'd gotten to know too well when he'd returned from Mexico.

x

"What did she say?" He can barely believe he's asking this. "What's her explanation?"

"Nothing. She denied the whole thing."

"She did what?" The more he hears, the less sense it makes.

"I asked if there was some issue between them, some problem. She said 'no'. She insists the tray slipped out of her hand, that it was an accident. I told her I saw everything, that I watched her dump the stuff on Larsen. She insisted harder that I was wrong, that it was a slip. She says they're friends."

"They are."

"Looks to me like the friendship went south. I gave her several chances, she wouldn't come clean. I finally sent her away, came up here to double check. I was sure I wasn't wrong." He points to the frozen image of himself alone in the corridor. "I wasn't."

x

Gibbs turns to the operator at the control panel. "Back up the first footage and close in. Let me see it slow."

The images flash backward at extreme speed for less than five seconds, and when it stops Palmer is just stepping out of the Cashier area. The image zooms to a ten square foot area with Christina Larsen on the left side of the screen, seated at her table.

At barely one quarter speed Michelle steps into the frame and Gibbs can see the slow rise of steam coming from the large cup and the bowl. His agent pauses beside the other, and at this magnification he can see her eyes glance briefly down to the woman beside her. She lowers her right hand, raises her left almost vertical and the liquid flows through the air ahead of the containers to splash onto Larsen's face and chest.

For an instant at this reduced speed Larsen doesn't move, then shock paints itself on her face and she leaps upward, her mouth open in the first of many screams.

But Gibbs' attention is on Palmer and he watches surprise evolve into shock. She releases the tray which slowly falls downward to the floor, moving less slowly than the scalded woman but Palmer's reaction isn't what he expects.

Shock and distress mount, coupled with horror, and until her hands cover her mouth she paints a very convincing image of astonished distress over the agony of a friend.

x

As others move into the frame Larsen rips open her blouse and Gibbs can see the burns are already livid around Larsen's white bra after only seconds, and he can watch her skin of face and torso grow redder even as Palmer's distress increases.

"She paints a good picture," Higgins says of Michelle's response to the 'accident'. "If I hadn't been watching from the beginning, I think I'd have even believed it was like she told it."

"She's not that good an actress."

Higgins turns on him, surprised. "You mean you believe her, that this was an accident? You want to see it again?"

He watches Palmer, who hasn't been able to put anything past him since the day they met - her face is a mask of her true thoughts - give an utterly convincing display of a shocked woman whose just been involved in a tragic and unexpected accident. If this is an act….

"She's not acting."

"Larsen's in Medical with first degree burns over 20 percent of her body."

"And Palmer denied everything?"

"Vehemently. Tray slipped, it was an accident, they're friends, she'd never hurt her. Now we've dealt with all sorts of liars, but either she's suddenly gotten better that every politician on the Hill -"

"Palmer couldn't lie about her shoe size."

"Or else she's become a Sociopath in a day."

Gibbs shakes his head. "Or she actually believes every word of her story."

x

Gibbs is glad when Higgins stops, because he has to make a decision, resolve how he's going to address this. It's an evidently deliberate assault caught on camera in merciless detail, followed by the apparent aftermath of a horrific accident, from a woman he's known for over a year to be barely capable of a convincing lie. Normally he'd go to Ducky. He'd never go to the Medics, doesn't trust their judgment but Ducky is in Scotland and Isles…. The woman's a walking encyclopedia but is she any good with psychology?

Is Palmer faking this? No. DiNozzo would say she couldn't fake her way out of a paper bag - how senseless is that? - he'd expect such a mixed metaphor from Ziva but considerihg the man's conditoon he'll cut him some slack - but he knows she can handle herself if the situation calls for it. The woman's had one major Undercover assignment, had done adequately and he'd backed her on that because there was no one else who could do the job and she's a trained Special Agent but….

But she and DiNozzo are both behaving bizarrely. He'd thought that there been no connection between them during or after DiNozzo's poisoning - haven't the doctors identified it yet? - but what is going on with those two?

They were in that maze together. No, not together, but in the maze. She never reached DiNozzo, but she'd touched many of those transparent walls. Could there be something more to that place than CS discovered, some trap meant for rescuers?

Did they even look at the maze?

He turns to the operator. "Let me see it again. Slower."

xxx

McGee and David look from his car in front of the driveway to a one story home barely three quarters of a mile from Scalici's place. He's used the car to block the blue Ford Taurus backed into the driveway; no fast getaway or high speed chase through suburbia.

He sees Ziva check her Sig but does no more than loosen his own weapon in its holster. In the images of their prey she's little more than a girl, and he expects it to be more likely that he'll deal through an astounded or outraged parent.

Ziva cocks a shell into the chamber and holds the weapon in her hand as she pulls the door handle.

"Whoa, Zee, what are you doing?"

She turns to him and in her eyes he sees that he looks to her like he's spouted a second head. "We are apprehending a dangerous perpetrator."

"She's a sixteen year old girl, not Doctor Evil." He immediately regrets the comparison; Myers had proven a challenge for no one but himself.

"She is a manipulative murderess who has enticed a series of men into raping and beating to death a still unknown number of innocent women. These women sought on-line romance and she engineered their deaths. And I remind you, Tim, that the last 'girl' you challenged and underestimated nearly ruptured your testicles."

Actually, the last woman he'd 'challenged' hadn't been the one Ziva was thinking of. It'd been SA Nell Jones and she'd done nothing more than bang her palms against his chest and completely humiliate him before a hundred strangers.

He remembers the incident Ziva is referring to, but he'd prefer to forget that brief but painful encounter.

"I'd rather start out with a carrot than a stick."

"You munch on your carrot," she says, getting out of the car with Sig firmly in hand, "I shall beat her over the head with my stick."

'Is it my imagination,' he thinks as he gets out and quickly follows her, intending to reach the door first and establish a non-shooting approach, 'or am I the only one not terminally grouchy?'

x

He wishes, as he passes Ziva, that they had a warrant. Things often go far more smoothly with that piece of paper, but there's no time. Not only is Michelle Palmer, who would normally be tasked with that, erratically absent - UA Gibbs would consider her - but they must move quickly to take this girl down. If she realizes Scalici has been taken, she'll probably run.

The direct approach often being the best one when dealing with minors, they walk to the front door and he knocks.

Ziva has stopped a few feet back where she can observe the situation as a whole, and quite probably blow Waghoff out of her shoes if she does anything, yet he wishes there were more agents to cover the back.

He considers sending Ziva around the house, but splitting the team is a very bad idea.

He knocks again, more sharply. "One moment," a woman's voice calls from within. He waits until a blonde woman wearing jeans and blue blouse opens the door.

"Mrs. Waghoff?"

"Yes?"

He makes a fast introduction. "We're looking for Mary Waghoff. Is she home?"

"No, I'm sorry, she's out. Can I help you?"

McGee and David pull out their IDs, offer brief introductions. "We'd like to speak to your daughter."

Tim can read in the woman's face the many thoughts that flash through her mind when Federal Agents come asking to speak to a minor.

"Why?" is the first question the woman chooses, the classic choice.

x

Tim doesn't want to put her back up. "We believe she may be a witness to a crime. Do you know a John Scalici?"

"He's one of her friends."

"What do you know about him?"

"Next to nothing. Why? Has he done something?"

Something indeed. "Do you know where your daughter is now, Mrs. Waghoff?"

"She's gone out for the day."

There was no vehicle in the driveway. "Did she take the car?"

"Yes."

He doesn't want to alert her by asking too many questions. DMV records will tell him more about the car than he can get from the woman. He'd rather she think they were trying to help her daughter. "We believe this man, John Scalici, to be dangerous. Did she say anything before she left?"

"She said something about the Crescendo."

A glance at Ziva shows Tim she has her PADD out and is quickly thumb-typing.

"What do you mean 'dangerous'?" the woman asks. "How dangerous?"

"You needn't worry about that. He's in custody."

"Thank God," she breathes. "I didn't trust him."

"I thought you didn't know him well."

"You don't have to know someone to not trust him."

"Yes, ma'am." He pulls out his wallet, withdraws one of his cards and hands it to Waghoff. "As soon as you can get in touch with her, please call me." He knows this is a gamble and he doesn't like the odds. "Does she have a cell phone?" He'd found nothing registered in her name, itself a defiance of odds for a teenage girl.

"No."

He decides that if she does have one, even if the woman doesn't know it, it will be a burn phone, disposable and virtually untraceable. Nevertheless, he must try.

xx

When Tim and Ziva walk the stone path to the sidewalk, he's very worried. Ziva reveals that "I did not find any 'Crescendo' in DC."

"It's not a place, it's a thing, like the climax of a book. She must know we've taken Scalici and that we'd eventually come for her. She's hiding."

"We shall find her." She sounds assured of that. He's sure she's wrong.

"We're not going to find her in time." She turns to him and he sees her understanding in the apprehension that shines in her eyes. "Crescendo. Climax. They're committing these murders by remote control," he reminds her.

The color falls from her face. "She is going to set the rest of them off."

xxx

When Gibbs comes down from MTAC he expects to see Palmer but she's not at her desk, and McGee and Ziva have called with very bad news. Palmer had gone for that break for lunch and that's the last he'd seen of her. She's now severely overdue, but he knows why she'd be reluctant to return to the bullpen.

He'd tried to call her, but her cell phone is turned off. He'd then called the main gate, they'd contacted their Security counterparts and within minutes had called back. Palmer hasn't left the Yard.

She and DiNozzo are both acting strangely. Is there some connection to the bizarre behavior they both display?

Palmer is absent. Why? Guilt? But Gibbs doesn't call for a search for her. He wants the chance to talk to her before bringing anyone outside the team (beyond Fred Higgins) into the issue. With worry over DiNozzo and now the stress over Wahhoff, he doesn't need a UA agent.

She'd conspired with McGee's wife to get her husband a couple of weeks in a Franciscan Friary as a way of getting his head back together and give them a chance to save their marriage. In his opinion she needs this Retreat more than he does.

He doubts she'll have the chance to get it.

x

His cell phone rings, and when he hears the voice call his name he's vastly relieved. This is his first bit of good news all afternoon. "What've you got, Abs?"

/Five tons of anxiety attacks! How can you not tell me Tony was poisoned?/ the slightly distorted voice demands.

"You were in Louisiana. I needed answers fast." It's not an excuse, he never makes excuses, but neither does he apologize.

/I _was_ in Louisiana! We're on a plane into Dullus./

He knew this but "We?"

/Dawn's with me, but _never mind that_. Listen, I've already spoken to Ruby and had her call the hospital. From her analysis it's definitely Amanita muscaria poisoning. Probably a derivative. Now I'm going to land in an hour but I am monumentally _pissed_ that you guys haven't figured out the formula on your own, since I deduced it just from what Ruby read from Major Mass Spec and Colonel Gas Spectroscope.

/I'm coming into Dullus as I said; they wouldn't let me divert this monstrosity to Reagan, but I'd've had to wait until this evening for an available seat. When I land I'm going to break every speed record you've ever set./

"I'll have a car waiting for you."

/No, Gibbs, I'm not going to argue with some Probie who won't drive fast enough. I'm getting a rental - I already booked it from up here - but when I get to my lab to concoct the antidote if it's not already made I want you and Ruby and everyone else to stay the hell out of my way!/

The click of the airphone proves she's learned at least one lesson from him.


	7. She Will Kill Me

Chapter Seven  
She will kill me

Ziva enters the gym, fed up with Scalici. She can't do to him what the Mossad finds so effective, nor can she tear those women apart with her bare hands to get the answers she needs about the poison they used on Tony. Tony's still Critical. Mary Waghoff has slipped away and while Tim has identified the Waghoff car as a six year old blue Nissan and added that detail to the BOLO, there is no guarantee she will not be holed up at some friend's home with a computer. There is little need for Waghoff to set foot on the street again until an unknown number of romance bombs are set off.

Frustrated and angry, she needs to work off the tension that wraps her muscles in iron clamps. Maybe if she can loosen them she can think again.

But she's surprised to find Michelle Palmer has beaten her here. The woman had not been at her desk and the impression she'd gotten from Gibbs was that she hadn't been there for some time and he is crapped; no, pissed. To find Palmer in the gym is a bit of a surprise. In the mood Gibbs is in, she'd best be working on behind-the-head defenses.

She pauses for a moment, watching her partner's technique. The smaller woman is clad in knee length tights and sports bra and is working a kata exercise with one of the padded staffs. The seven foot pole has thick red covering at both ends which still maintains good balance but the woman doesn't display her trained grace.

In the months since they'd begun working out together - she's been teaching the former Law Clerk how to handle herself in the field - Michelle's skills had developed but now her poise and control seem to have deserted her. She's aggressive, but her motions are sharp and rough. There's no follow-through or smoothness. It looks like she's trying to club her imaginary opponent, to stop sharply at every simulated hit, to use brute strength rather than directed power to generate force. Thus, she's as clumsy in her movements as she'd been in her first days.

Ziva wonders, as she watches the unbalanced exercise, what could have caused the woman to regress so.

She goes to the storage wall, takes from it the complimentary staff, blue padded ends to Michelle's red, steps out onto the huge pad and levels the long wooden pole.

"Defend yourself."

x

Michelle whirls to find her armed 'opponent' and swings the staff as though to bat her off her feet, an awkward blow that Ziva blocks easily. Michelle tries to hit with the other end; a shift to her left while moving the staff to her right is all Ziva needs to block it. She counters Palmer's next three strikes as easily before bringing the right end upward, nearly knocking the staff from Michelle's hands. Though Palmer does retain hold of the staff, her upraised arms leave her vulnerable to over twenty devastating attacks which would finish the contest.

"You are gripping the wood too tightly. The staff and your hands and arms must all flow together." It'd been her very first instruction with the weapon and she'd thought the smaller woman had learned that thoroughly. Michelle had actually grown reasonably competent - for a battle against an amateur.

She comes in with a few three-quarter speed strikes that Michelle blocks, but the woman's hitting the stick aside rather than blocking. Though she's loosened her grip slightly, the movements are still sharp and stiff.

x

"Relax your muscles. You must flow in the motions, move smoothly from one attack to the next, not simply snap from one position to another."

She emphasizes the point with four quick strikes from four different directions and Michelle barely keeps hold of the staff. Palmer answers with a hard swing, almost like using a baseball bat and Ziva barely ducks under it in time, but there's no follow through, just a stop and force reverse and Ziva takes advantage of the unbalancing to jab the padded left end into Michelle's ribs.

Michelle answers with a hard vertical cross swipe that does connect but accomplishes less for the force used than a flowing move would. In the woman's eyes Ziva sees something she likes less than the abrupt stiffness.

"In fighting there is no place for anger. The only one your anger defeats is yourself. Now hold your staff level, hands open, let it rest in your right fingers and on your left thumb." Michelle does so, but Ziva sees annoyance, downright resentment. There is no place for that either. The woman was usually a compliant student, but this is beyond her worst days.

"Now bring your right end back, up and around, close your right hand and attack in a downward diagonal from your left to my right." Palmer does so and Ziva had intended to advise her to then swing upward with the left end to come up under her block but what she says instead is "Not so hard."

She'd anticipated a practice movement and had barely blocked the full-on attack.

"You are relearning movement and flow, not-" She has to rapidly block half a dozen attacks from different directions, all delivered at full strength.

She steps out of range, one foot on the mat, the other on the floor. "I said 'easy'," she admonishes. "We are practic-" she barely blocks another rapid set of assaults, the staccato clacks of wood sharp and loud. She ducks under the last one and when Michelle sets herself up again Ziva thrusts with the blue padded end, catches and spins Michelle's staff around like a propeller. The woman's forearms hit, block each other and the staff flies from her grip to bounce to the mat.

Ziva steps further away from the mat. "That is enough."

x

The anger in Michelle's brown eyes is unsettling, unrestrained, a depth of anger she's never seen from the woman.

"Again!" the smaller woman demands and bends to retrieve the staff, but Ziva presses the blue padding of her staff onto the middle of Michelle's.

"That is enough."

Michelle shoves Ziva's staff off hers, wrenches the weapon from the floor and swings it like a stickball bat. Again Ziva evades.

Then she counter-attacks.

x

Michelle had been hitting hard but Ziva knows how to generate true force and five hard clacks sound almost as one. She drives Michelle back and steps back onto the mat, driving the woman back further until they're in the middle of the padded area.

Michelle barely blocks the strikes in time but her stiff forcefulness slows her defense, which should flow from one attack to meet the next. Then Michelle counter-attacks, hits harder and harder in her own attacks, grunting with the increased effort, battering at Ziva's stick while the taller woman uses less effort in defense than Michelle puts out in her pounding attack.

Rage and frustration build in Palmer's eyes every time her attempted assaults meet wood rather than flesh.

"I said forget anger. It is not your ally." But Michelle tries to crash the staff down from overhead. Ziva twists her staff, knocks the red padded staff out of position and follows through with a powerful impact to the opposite direction of the woman's grip. The red pads twirl end over end across the room and Michelle is left clutching her stinging hands.

"That is enough," Ziva says, not at all liking the rage that shines in the normally placid woman's brown eyes.

"Again!" She takes a step toward the pole some yards away, Ziva puts the blue pad of her staff against the woman's stomach. Michelle shoves it away from her with too much force, Ziva merely swings it about in a smooth, effortless motion and blocks her again.

"That is enough," Ziva declares with utter finality.

x

Ziva throws her own staff several yards away, behind and far from her angry opponent, turns and walks off the mat. She crosses the gym to the door, touches the handle

BANG two feet to her left makes her shift right, hand reaching for her Sig at its accustomed place at her belt as a long wooden pole clatters to the floor beside her.

Fortunately for Michelle the Sig is upstairs.

This, Ziva sees with more consternation than surprise as she looks at the source of the noise as it rolls to a stop beside her. It's one of the unpadded hardwood poles, seven feet long and designed for advanced users. The end of the staff is whitened where it has dented the wall beside where she stood, paint and plaster marking the end.

She cannot believe that Michelle had thrown the staff like a javelin.

x

She turns to where Michelle is by the wall holder at the far end of the room. The woman yanks the other unpadded pole from it with vicious force and whirls on her, pole tightly gripped in both fists. "AGAIN!"

Ziva's not sure if she's more disbelieving of the demand, the reckless viciousness of the throw - two feet right and it would have given her a concussion - or the insensate fury in the normally gentle woman. "You do not want to do this."

Michelle advances like an enraged leopard and Ziva must scoop up the bare staff and move away from the wall in time to avoid getting pinned with no room to maneuver. Palmer seems determined to up the scale and she must meet her insensate partner's challenge.

Michelle, staff clenched in white fists, cuts her off and unleashes a rain of blows Ziva can barely keep ahead of, the cracks reverberating off the distant walls. She's driven backward, must maneuver around to be driven back and back into the main body of the gym, back toward the mat.

There's nothing of style, finesse or grace in the onslaught, just a vicious rain of blows so violent that she can barely hold onto her staff, can't attack. She must fight a purely defensive battle to the staccato cracks punctuating the woman's fury.

x

She quickly backs ten feet away, the suddenness of her retreat apparently catching Palmer off guard. "Stop this!"

But she's not far enough out of range, Michelle steps in and swings the staff with an enraged scream. Ziva barely gets her staff in position in time, angling the pole so Palmer's strikes hers with a glancing blow that still stings her hands.

Michelle, gripping the staff in the middle, unleashes a volley of left and right strikes. The only thing which saves Ziva is that Michelle's furious attack is based purely upon power, not cunning or tactics. Ziva can see each attack before it's launched.

But having skill and tactics on her side, Ziva knows, avails her nothing. Michelle's mad assault is all offense, requiring Ziva to defend herself at the cost of counter-attack.

Michelle shrieks, changes her assault from a horizontal onslaught to an overhead vertical one and Ziva barely gets her staff up in time to block it. But it's the first of many.

The barrage, faster and greater than she expected, driven by murderous rage, drives her down on one knee. Michelle rains down one slam after another, every strike delivered with all the force the smaller woman can muster.

Into Ziva's mind flashes the final Skywalker / Vader conflict, Luke slamming his saber beam over and over into Vader's upraised defense.

She knows that if the grunting woman batters her staff down, she'll beat her to death.

x

Michelle raises the staff high, evidently for her most powerful two fisted strike, probably hoping to break the defending pole in half. Ziva spins her staff, rams it into Michelle's left rib almost hard enough to crack it. Michelle freezes momentarily in intense pain and Ziva slams the end into her solar plexus.

Michelle doubles over with a squeaking cry, drops the staff and crashes to her knees, barely gets her hands out in time to keep from slamming onto her face.

x

While she wheezes, probably trying to remember the rhythm to breathe, Ziva steps to the side and kicks the end of the dropped staff, launches it like a torpedo across the room until it slides with a crack into the far wall.

"That - is - _enough_!" she declares. Michelle looks up, her breath still broken.

x

It has been a very long time since cold fear has chased through Ziva's body, but it chases her now as she backs away from her friend and partner.

In the gasping woman's eyes she sees her own murder.

xxx

"We have each seen that look," Ziva tells the Deputy SAIC in the bullpen. McGee is away from his desk, she neither knows nor cares where, so long as she and Gibbs have a moment of privacy.

John Scalici stews in Holding, Mary Waghoff is still being hunted, Andrea Harper and Janet Vancer are in marathon inquisitions in I 1 & 2. Together with what's happening with Tony, it feels like the cosmos is spinning out of control.

"That was more than fury, there was murder in her eyes. If she could have gotten up, she would have killed me - and I do not believe I could have stopped her short of seriously injuring her."

"I've spoken to her too many times about her temper."

"Gibbs, this is more than an out of control temper. In fact, I do not have an English word to adequately describe this level of rage."

"Where is she now?"

"I do not know. I could have summoned Security, but I decided it would be more prudent to simply withdraw. When I returned ten minutes later, she was gone. I checked with the front gate before you got back from your meeting with the Director; she has left the Navy Yard."

Gibbs says nothing. His meeting had been to discuss with Jennifer Shepherd the Larsen incident which is presently thought of by all but one witness to be an accident. He had hoped, and Shepherd had concurred, that they would keep the matter within limits and find out from Palmer what's happening.

This incident now makes such discretion impossible.

x

Palmer has, at times, struggled with her temper but, due to the stresses they must operate under each day, together with the strains Jimmy suffers since being forced to kill George Franklin and the subsequent strain upon their marriage, he'd been inclined to give the couple slack to let them work out their problems.

Her slack has just run out.

"Okay, Ziva, I'll handle this." The woman only nods and returns to her desk. He wishes he had Ducky to consult with but that option is closed. At this point he has only one final choice. He pulls out his cell phone, hating to press the speed dial.

/Yes, Jethro./

"Coming up to see you again, Jenn." This is one time an unannounced walk-in will definitely work against them.

xx

"What's wrong, Jethro?" Shepherd mentally braces herself. It's been minutes since she'd received the update on Agent DiNozzo's condition, so his grim expression tightens her stomach.

"We have more problems." He gives her a terse report on Palmer's odd behavior, tying it into DiNozzo's.

"You told me she never reached him in that maze."

"She didn't. But what if-?" His cell phone interrupts. "Yeah, it's Gibbs."

/This is Doctor Kramer from MedStar. I'm sorry to have to tell you that your friend, Mister - sorry, Special Agent DiNozzo, passed away twenty minutes ago. We attempted resuscitation but were not successful./

x

x

x

x

/Special Agent Gibbs, are you still there?/

"Ye-. Yes, Doctor." He needs to take a breath. Several. "I'm here."

/I hope it will be a consolation that he felt no pain. He never recovered consciousness./

"Th-" He has to take a breath. "Thank you, doctor. We'll make..." The spacious office seems so much smaller. "We'll make the necessary arrangements."

He closes the phone before he can say anything more and turns to Shepherd.

Her eyes, her face, her body, everything says there's no need to say the words. But it's not going to be real... It's not going to be real until he says them.

"Tony's gone."

x

How long does the world stop? Thirty seconds? A minute? A minute and a half before it resumes and life becomes real again?

Shepherd reaches out for the intercom, presses the call button. "Cynthia?"

/Yes, Director?/ comes the crisp - unknowing - response.

"Cynthia..." She has to keep her tone steady, keep her whole body steady. "Cynthia, please activate the All Call."

/Yes, Director./ Is there some awareness in her tone, some perception that this message that will momentarily be sent out is more than unusual?

Shepherd looks up at Gibbs, his expression is stone, but she tries to convey her appeal to him. She's not sure if it's received, not sure he wants to receive anything, but in less than ten total seconds /All Call ready, Director./

x

She pushes the Intercom button. "Attention all NCIS Personnel." She has to release the button. It has to be said, but in one second a million images of Anthony DiNozzo blast through her mind - and God help her, he's laughing in every one of them.

"Attention ..." Steady. Force steadiness. Tie it up in chains and padlock it a thousand times if necessary. "It is my sad duty to announce..." One of the padlocks slips. Relock it. "Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo." Slip. Relock. Swallow. Rub away a stinging tear. "Has succumbed to..." To what? "To an attack sustained in the Line of Duty." Her throat swollen, it's so hard to force the words out... but they have to come. "Arrangements will be announced..." Announced when? 'Arrangements' are always... "when they are known."

She releases the button. No formal leave-taking. If anyone's waiting to hear if she'll say more, perhaps they can suggest what to say.

xx

Gibbs leaves the offices, unable to remain any longer. For a man who appreciates the blessings of silence there's too much. But on the upper platform, midway between the MTAC entrances, his path is blocked by two women, Nikki Jardin and Janet Levy who stand hugging each other. Though they're not crying, he sees the grief that suffuses and overflows them.

He stops beside them. Not one for emotional displays, he cannot just pass them by. He can't pass at all.

It's half a minute before either notices him, and they reach out to him.

He can never deny he needs this embrace.

Larger than either woman, his reach holds them, both women's faces nearly hidden by his chest, their arms around him and each other, a tightly held trio of silent grief.

"The last words I said to him..." Nikki Jardin, the one he'd never imagined clinging to anyone, whispers into his chest, her breath fast and hard, "the very last words I ever said to him," she whispers, her voice strained, "were 'Go to Hell, Anthony DiNozzo'."

She breaks, violent sobs against his body and her tears drag Janet Levy down with her. Both women sob into his chest, their tumult shaking him. He'd try to be a strong pillar but his face is wet and he doesn't want to stop it.


	8. Death

Chapter Eight  
Death

Ten minutes later the third floor is silent, not just in Gibbs' enclave; the entire Operations Division is hushed. McGee and David sit at their desks on either side. No one wants to speak. He doubts his partners are seeing anything in the present.

Daylight streams in through the huge skylight, but Gibbs remembers that night years ago. The storm was violent, the tumultuous rain and the lightning blasted the huge room on the night Kate Todd didn't return. He did, McGee did, Tony did.

Kate didn't.

There should be a storm.

"Gibbs?"

He looks to his right, to the woman seated at the desk close to his own, where Kate had sat. Having Kate's twin running Autopsy doesn't help.

He tries not to see the desk across the bullpen, empty and still.

It's hard to answer. The words are there, but they must be forced out. "What?"

A moment of silence. She shakes her head.

Whatever it was isn't important.

Nothing is important.

Then her phone rings. It might be business, it might be a fellow Agent offering condolences. Three, five, nine rings, she has to pick up the receiver. She listens.

x

She reaches for the speaker button. "Abby."

The men cross the bullpen. No one moves very fast. There's no need to cross at all; they can hear every word. But it is times like this that demand closeness.

/I'm on 267 outside Wolf Trap, doing 92 and the LEOs had better stay out of my way!/ Abby announces in determined tones over the roar of her engine, 92 on a road rated for 50. They can hear strained tires as she weaves between slower moving cars, challenging for every extra inch. /I'll be there in 20 minutes, but I can't reach Ruby either in the lab or on her cell. Where the Hell is she?/

"Abby–"

/What's the update from MedStar? How's Tony? Do you have the latest blood work?/

"Abby–"

/I need the blood saturation figures and everything Major Mass Spec and Captain Gas Chromatascope have./

"Abby–"

/We need every bit of data MedStar has. Are the blood saturation figures down? What's the latest-?/

"Abby, Tony is dead."

/_WHAT_?/

Screech of tires drowned out by a discordant pair of shrieks.

A crash!

Higher shrieks and more crashes, more and more and more but no more screams.

"ABBY!"

No one needs images to see the speeding car roll, crash upon crash upon crash and no screams at all.

"ABBY! ABBY!" Ziva screams impotently at the phone, barely aware of Gibbs and McGee before her shouting as loudly. "ABBYYYYY!"

There's no answer.

There's no sound.

Nothing.

Nothing.

x

Ziva looks up, her chest heaving, her soul torn by the horror in Gibbs' and McGee's eyes.

"McGee, get a location!" Gibbs' voice reverberates through Operations. Beyond it the room full of Agents is utterly silent. "Get someone out there!"

"She is on 267 by Wolf Trap," she reminds them.

"Ziva, get Highway Patrol!" He yanks out his cell phone, presses the 9 hard.

None of them will say it.

92 miles per hour.

Loss of control.

A rolling, bouncing crash...

xxx

The helicopter is the only way to reach the site, but they see the devastation from far off, long before details can be made out. Eastbound, the road toward DC is barren; westbound it's backed up for miles as the four person copter shoots along the highway. They'd gotten the exact location from emergency broadcasts by Rescue vehicles.

They hadn't needed it.

Even with Crash Priority it took too many agonizing minutes to procure a helicopter – none were available at the Navy Yard and every minute's delay tore at their souls.

As they approach the crowded scene, barren on their left up to the spot filled with cars on their right, it's obvious from the lack of urgent activity that the Rescue vehicles aren't needed either.

The helicopter blows smoke away from the shattered wreck and lands on the barren highway thirty feet away, too close by far to deny the truth.

The car - none of the grieving agents can guess what kind it had been - is a crumpled mass of smashed, smoking steel.

It had burned to a blackened husk, but even this is out while they'd fought, demanding access to a helicopter that was miles away.

The uniformed men who stand between them and the washed out wrecked hulk do not need to say anything. Their faces say the words.

x

Gibbs fights hard to contain the grief that rips him, crushes his heart and tightens his breath until he can't draw another. If he does he'll shatter and weep the tears that burn his eyes. He doesn't glance at McGee or David, for to see the grief that batters them will destroy his control.

This leaves him no place to look but through the mangled space that had once framed the wind shield, now only recognizable as such for its position in the twisted, smoldering wreckage. Through the distorted portal the black, burnt out husks that had once been two women's heads and upper bodies tear his heart. The restraints that had held the women upright in the rolling crash had done nothing to save them.

There are three men between him and the still lightly smoking hulk, but he can't bring himself to see them. They stand waiting. He can't say anything.

He can't rip his eyes from the black body to his right. He can't see her face for the charring but he knows the shape of that almost hairless, blackened/reddened skull too well.

He's kissed it too many times.

x

Tony has been dead for over an hour, barely more than half an hour before Abby called on her mission to save him. Called... and died.

The woman with her, another mercy mission; what was her name? He doesn't remember. He met her a year ago. She obviously came to help or whatever. He knew her name but it won't come.

The only names that fill his brain to bursting are 'Tony' and 'Abby'.

He glances back to his team, such as are left. McGee's on his phone and his expression is enough. That woman will be busy, so will her Methodist partner. Best they get on the job.

Ziva is shut down, her face a mask but he knows this one so well. She only puts it on for devastation or worse.

There's nothing for them to do, nothing to investigate, no pictures to take yet. He doesn't want any but they'll have to come.

Later.

x

He looks again into the crushed interior, at the black bodies, as though anything could make it not be true. Abby's black leather is fused to her throat and wrists and the silver spikes that radiate from them are charred too. These are her warrior set, at least so they always say to him. She puts them on, if not at the start of her day, then when she's determined to solve a puzzle and everyone had best get out of her way.

The body beside her - Dawn Caldwell, that's the name - is smaller; once fair and blonde, now black/red and almost hairless. Her mouth is open in an eternal silent shriek, her right arm bent outward midway between elbow and wrist and her head rests at a too unnatural angle.

She was a kindergarten teacher. They'd met last year at some lake, the name won't come to him. Abby had gone to Louisiana last week to help her recover from the trauma of that occasion.

She was coming up to return the favor.

x

"Gibbs?" It's Ziva's voice. He nods, doesn't look back, doesn't want to speak. He won't look away from Abby. "I have been unable to reach Michelle, either through her numbers or through Jimmy."

He turns his head, stares until she wisely walks away. The woman had better be working at her desk when they return or else never try to approach it again.

Behind them the highway is empty, and in time NCIS and other vehicles will follow. Shepherd is already on her way. Other trucks will come, but they can do nothing for Abby.

In the other direction, far off traffic is being routed off the nearest exit. The blocked cars are being laboriously backed out and he doesn't care.

x

Tony is dead. He died from that poison without ever awakening again.

Abby, in trying to save him, is dead. She died in horror and agony.

And for an act of kindness, another innocent woman is dead.

Gibbs, unseen by his team, clenches his fists, and as thousands of memories of his friends assail him.

His soul screams in savage fury. Rage he hasn't felt since Shannon and Kelly were burned to death inflames him. His silent scream shakes Heaven and smashes open the gates of Hell.

_Those women will **pay**_!

xxx

When Michelle gets home the first things she does are take the phone receiver off its cradle and disconnect the wire to silence the inevitable signal. She doesn't want to talk to anyone, doesn't want to be bothered by anyone.

She's so very tired but far too upset to sleep. 'How could Special Agent Higgins accuse me of something so horrible? How could he say I'd hurt Tina?' This has filled her mind a thousand times, and still there's no good answer. 'It slipped, dammit, it slipped! It was not my fault!'

She'd tried to see Jimmy. He'd have understood. She can tell him everything - but he was working and she couldn't tell him anything.

She'd tried to reach Sp– to reach Gibbs, but his phone was off. Finally, depressed, she'd decided it was close enough to 1600. Tomorrow's another day and it has to be better than today.

Maybe in the morning there'll be more hopeful news about Spe– about Tony DiNozzo. 'Any news will be an improvement.'

x

Turning off the living room light, she walks into the bedroom, pulls her cell phone from her belt intending to check the charge, but when she presses the red button the screen remains black.

'Off? When'd I turn it off? Gibbs hates it when cells... Know what? I don't care. If he yells at me, he can do it tomorrow. He's yelled at me enough for one day.'

That extra hard head slap last night had hurt for hours. 'Maybe I should go to HR, or maybe even the Director. Maybe then he'll keep his hands to himself!'

She goes to her bureau, empties her pockets. 'Whoa, what's this?'

It's a plastic protected scalpel she's pulled out of her brown vest pocket. 'How in the Goddess' name did this get here?'

There's only one place a scalpel could come from: Autopsy.

She remembers now. After her faux pas in Autopsy she'd put the tool in the sterilizer, she's certain of that. 'How in Hades could it wind up in my pocket?'

She transfers it to her purse. She'll get it back tomorrow, hopefully without either Jimmy or Maura discovering that she'd ever had it.

She lays down on the bed, too tired to sleep, too depressed to care about anything.

'How could Special Agent Higgins say that?'

xx

Jimmy Palmer opens his apartment door, still stunned by the deaths of his friends. He was with Dr. Isles when Abby's body - how appalling is that? - was brought in. He'd taken the call from Director Shepherd on the scene at just before 4:30, and he and Isles had prepared Autopsy to receive Abby.

It's almost too much to take in. He'd unzipped the body bag at 5:24 and the sight of Abby's face... he'd gripped the gurney tightly to keep from collapsing or running from the room but he couldn't hold back the tears.

Abby had been so wonderful, a friend - a dear friend - for so long. Always upbeat, always ready with a hug and a kind word, always ready to talk, to share her...

He will never hug Abby Sciuto again.

x

He'd tried to call 'Chelle, over and over, but he couldn't reach her. Her cell was off and home was busy. At least she was safe - after Tony and Abby he'd had a moment's scare but when he heard the busy signal...

She's ignoring the 'call waiting' signals, but at least she's safe. Probably calling China.

Doctor Isles decided to hold Abby's autopsy, not that one's needed, off until the morning. Her friend's body had gone on to Metro's morgue, but he'd had to slide Abby's charred, blackened body into the cooling chamber.

Abby hated closed in spaces, or was it just Autopsy because she had no trouble sleeping in her coffin? She used to have dreadful nightmares about Autopsy, had refused on many days to...

Doctor Isles probably knew why he left immediately, his final wrap-up undone, but he couldn't stand to stay one more second, not and hold off the grief that tore him.

x

"Honey?"

The living room is dark, but there's light around the bedroom door frame at the end of the short hallway beyond bathroom and closet. "Honey?"

He hesitates at the door, flashing back to last night, how she'd screamed at him for walking out into the living room while she was so distressed about Tony. Well, today's distress is far worse than yesterday's, and if she's doing anything Wiccan after her call, well, he'll deal with that if he must. He opens the door to the lighted room. "Hon–"

x

He feels his mouth fall open, his eyes feel like they widen larger than the lenses of his glasses, because he couldn't be more stunned. "-ney?"

She's standing beside their bed, smiling - itself half amazing - but what she's wearing...

It's her red Vampirella costume he'd bought for her so many months ago, its slim scarlet straps not quite covering her breasts but leaving her torso bare before meeting again at the suit's bottom in a stylized golden bat decorating her pubes. The high white stand-up collar is held to the red straps by a golden circlet and her black hair is framed by the stiff material.

This is one of his favorite fantasy images, never failing to arouse in seconds. That she's barefoot rather than wearing the calf-high black leather boots he so likes only makes her look nakeder. More naked? Who cares?

But the apartment and her cell phones are off. Obviously she can't know about Tony and Abby.

"Honey…?" He's utterly amazed, can barely find words.

x

"I've been waiting for you," she whispers, her seductive tone scorching the air between them.

"'Chelle?"

"Surprised?"

"Honey, that's a word and a half... but I think you'd better sit down."

"No. Lie down is what I have in mind."

She reaches past him, pushes the door closed, her body hot against his in just that brief touch.

The thin scarlet straps hide nothing, and pure lust shines in her eyes as she reaches to grasp him though his trousers.

She takes his right hand, lifts it to her breast

"Honey–"

"Quiet. Just take me. Take your savage vampire and plunge your stake in me!"

x

"Honey, haven't you heard that–?"

"Heard nothing. Don't want to hear anything."

"Honey, wait. I've got to tell you something."

She puts her hand across his mouth and assures him "It'll wait. _Later_. I've been dying for you to get back," she breathes hotly enough to melt his glasses. "I couldn't do it in Autopsy, but I wanted to apologize for snapping at you yesterday."

She comes up on her toes, he down into the kiss and her tongue asks entrance. He gives it, and they begin mutual licking and exploring.

Pressed close, her breasts against his chest, she shifts closer to him, grinds her hips into him while working her hand up and down through his pants. She uses her so-talented fingers, her other hand on his urging his gentle squeezing of her breast.

'Maybe she's right. Maybe I should tell her later. She's... she'll be relaxed and she'll be able to take it.'

x

He slips his hands under the thin scarlet straps, pushes them open and fondles her breasts more and more fervently as she stays up on her toes, her mouth scorching his. He gently caresses her, her hard nipples points upon his palms. He molds her breasts, teases her hardened nipples. He knows how ready she is for him by the firmness of the tiny nubs.

She wraps her left arm about his neck to support herself in her reach up his body, adds more fire to their kiss. Her right hand moves far more ardently along him, bringing him full.

"I need to suck your..." she whispers into his lips, and moans her pleasure at what his hands are doing to her breasts and she squeezes him hard. "Blood." Scorching breath burns his mouth.

He reaches down with his right hand into the material decorated by the stylized gold bat. His fingers touch her lips and she's very hot, wet and extremely ready for him. Her arm about his neck holds their bodies close, she upon her toes and he gently squeezes her breast as his other hand pets her, his fingers slipping past her wet lips. Her hot mouth pants her scorching breath into his as she works her body against his.

She pulls his hand free from her, out of the cloth and guides it up until he can smell her scent. She breaks the kiss and touches his fingers to his lips so he can taste her wetness. He grips her harder, pulls her back to him, holds her more fervently as their kiss doubles in passion. He reaches back down, both hands cup her bottom and she hops up. Her bare feet link behind his hips and their lips burn as he kneads her bare behind and carries her to the bed.

x

He lays her under him, captures a nipple between his lips and sucks, makes her gasp but she pushes him up, quickly rolls them both over and she's on top. She shifts to kneel at his side. The scarlet straps are far aside, her breasts available to hands but far out of reach of his mouth and she presses him onto his back, attacks his belt and zipper. He reaches for her breasts as she frees him. He lifts his hips and she shoves shirt and pants and tee shirt and briefs up and down out of her way, but she takes his hands from her breasts, presses them to the bed and straddles his thighs.

"No. I said I want to suck your..." she gives him a fiery smile, "...blood."

x

She lays down upon him, moves her body away down between his open legs, her own legs off the foot of the bed. He opens as widely as his lowered trousers will allow, accommodating her. She lays upon his trapped legs and cups her hands about his testicles. The sides of her hands press to his base, the backs protect her face from the fine hairs as she opens her mouth and takes him in.

He groans, head back on the pillow. Her hot mouth engulfs him as she sucks gently, her tongue strokes every millimeter she can reach as she keeps him in her hot mouth.

She draws up slowly to the head, turns her hands over, gets her thumbs and forefingers about his base, squeezes rhythmically to the pulse throbbing in him and comes down, takes him deep, holds him in and licks. He groans, urging her to more firmness in her licking, more sensation in her gentle sucking.

He's big but she's had so much practice taking his length. He feels her heat and gentle sucking flare throughout his body. She gets her lips all the way down to her hands and slowly draws up and works down, over and over, the sensations driving him mad as he groans with every inch.

She licks all about each time she takes him in deep, her tongue strokes the sensitive lower side and he groans louder, longer and faster. He clenches the blanket hard enough to rip it. She takes as much of him as she can into her mouth, her lips at the base of his shaft.

x

_She bites hard_!

x

Jimmy shrieks, convulses under her as she holds him down and clenches her teeth tighter! She grinds hard, tears at him, gnaws with front and side teeth.

She lets an inch or so out and bites harder.

Her teeth cut into his penis and he shrieks, writhes on the bed, unable even to reach down. His penis softens, but nowhere nearly fast enough as she bites again. Chews! Her sharp teeth crush him, cut into his flesh!

He bucks almost hard enough to throw her off the bed. His screams echo through the apartment.

He tries to reach down but she tears at him, rips the thick yet softening meat. He falls back, bucks wildly, screams over and over as she tears through him.

He feels wetness flow over his pelvis, has a flash of her as he looks down. Blood flows from her mouth as he shrieks.

She pulls and tears, bites harder, his own convulsions helping her rip his flesh.

She holds his hips down hard under her and takes him in deeper, bites harder, grinds him between her sharp teeth, rips at his flesh.

x

Jimmy's never imagined such agony. He can't think, can't do anything but scream over and over. Something in him snaps. He only knows it's him or her.

He clenches his right fist, forces himself to sit up and as she bites again he swings as hard as he can.

His fist crashes into the side of her head. Her teeth are ripped along him and he shrieks as she's knocked off the foot of the bed. He falls back, clutches himself with both hands, turns on his side, unable to stop screaming. He feels blood gush out, slip between his fingers, but the pain's so horrendous he can't even get a better grip. Warm blood fills his hands, slips through...

x

Michelle shakes her head, dazed, surprised to find herself on the bedroom floor. The left side of her head hurts horribly. There's a warm wet taste in her mouth, it tastes horrible - and someone's screaming above her.

She climbs quickly up from the floor and horror blasts her.

Jimmy's writhing on the bed, screaming and crying, clutching his crotch. His body's trying to curl and prevent itself from doing so and blood spreads over the white blanket and what's that strange taste in her mouth, like hot–?

She catches sight of herself in the mirror over the head of the bed. She's standing in it in her Vampirella costume she uses only for Jimmy's favorite fantasy. Blood covers her mouth, runs down her chin and neck and drips between her bared breasts!

"GODDESS!" she breathes, wipes the blood that smears along her face and hand and she doesn't have time for this - Jimmy's bleeding to death!

x

She dives for the phone on his side night table; _buzz buzz buzz buzz_ under his screaming. How can it be–?

She unplugged it! She'd wanted quiet!

'The living room!'

She runs out, down the short corridor past the bathroom - she must pack towels onto him before he bleeds to death! She finds the phone!

She tries to shove the wire back in. Her hands are trembling so much it won't go in.

Jimmy's screams!

_ Buzz buzz buzz buzz_. She slams the receiver down. Two seconds - an eternity! She picks it up, stabs the buttons, shaking so hard she misses a 1, hits 2 and has to start over.

_Ring - ring - ring - ring_ under his screams.

"COME ON!"

/911 Operator, what is your emergency?/

"My husband's hurt! He's _bleeding_ to death! Oh Goddess, I mean Code 10:33, Code 10:33! _Federal Agent Down_!"

/What is your location?/

"Address. Address! OH GODDESS, I CAN'T _REMEMBER_!"


	9. Nightmare

Chapter Nine  
Nightmare

Hospitals are white, oppressively quiet and Michelle Palmer wants to cry. She's sitting on a lounge's couch in Georgetown Hospital, a Metro Policewoman in the chair across from her. She's been here for hours and hours and hours.

She'd woken up on her bedroom floor to a nightmare, a bleeding, screaming husband, her mouth coated in blood - she can't even get to a toothbrush to clean the horrible taste from her teeth - and she has no idea what's happened.

She doesn't want to believe this. She can't have done what they say, but the blood, the taste of it in her mouth... No, it can't... No, it's true. It's insane!

Her face, neck and chest are smeared and streaked with dried brown blood. She's wearing her Vampirella sex costume under her brown overcoat, the scarlet costume's high stiff white collar sticking out from the top of the coat. She has her purse clutched on her lap and this can't be happening. Under the right strap of the scandalous outfit no one but Jimmy's ever supposed to see she's aquired a large and sore bruise to her ribs. She has no idea where it came from, any more than the one to her left temple. She woke up on her bedroom floor with that one and stood up to a nightmare.

They won't let her see Jimmy and the only reason the policewoman across from her hasn't arrested her is that they haven't pieced things together any better than she has.

"Can I _please_ see my husband?" She's getting really tired of asking, really wants to wear this woman down to the point that she'll give in. They've been fighting this argument all night.

"He's still in surgery," the brunette woman says without sympathy.

"That's what you said twenty minutes ago."

"That's where he was twenty minutes ago."

x

She supposes that, with Jimmy's blood all over her face and chest, she shouldn't hope for more kindness. She can't remember putting this sex costume on. Her medallion, the Wiccan Circle Star and Cross Jimmy gave her, is gone and she can't remember what happened to it either. Probably broke off when she found herself on the floor and that so doesn't matter.

When she woke up on the floor at the foot of their bed that was the start of the nightmare. She'd called 911 and did what little she could for her bleeding, screaming husband. But when EMTs and Metro PD got there she had no answers.

His blood was in her mouth, on her face and chest, she's wearing a Vampirella sex outfit, and to every question the best answer she'd had was 'I don't know'.

When the EMTs wheeled Jimmy out - she has no idea when he'd passed out but it was while Metro Police were demanding answers, she'd grabbed her overcoat, purse and shoved her bare feet into the calf high black leather boots, not sure why she did it except it needed no thought to rematch the outfit - but Metro had forced her into a Police car when she'd struggled to ride in the ambulance with Jimmy.

She's not in handcuffs - yet - that's probably waiting on Jimmy pressing charges, but she hasn't tried to leave the lounge and suspects she won't be able to. A regular suspect would be in a Metro holding cell. Only the fact that she's a Federal Agent has saved her from that but she doesn't feel lucky. They took away her Sig but left her ID.

She hasn't called in yet this morning, but in time someone must call NCIS and she can't even think of anything beside Jimmy.

She knows what they'll say.

'You're fired' sounds about right.

'Are you crazy?' sounds like a very good second.

x

"Can I at least wash?" She feels the tacky dried blood on her face and chest, tastes Jimmy's blood in her mouth and fights back the nausea again.

"When the detectives get here."

She pulls up her coat sleeve. It's 7:19, she's been here with this insensitive woman all night. The team is already on duty and either Gibbs or Isles will call soon - she has Jimmy's phone in her purse and what is she going to tell them? "When will that be?"

"When they get here."

"Thank you so very much."

x

The door opens and a white smocked man and a Metro PD Officer step in. The staff member's name is in black on his long coat: L. Inkinser, Internist. She doesn't care what the Officer's name is. Her "How's my husband?" comes under the Officer's "Cut her loose." Since the Internist defers to the officer, he continues "The victim woke up for a few minutes in Recovery. He refuses to press charges."

Without another word the man and woman start to leave, their jobs over and their shifts probably ended and she doesn't give a damn. Then she remembers. "My Sig?" she asks expectantly.

"That's been vouchered," the woman says no more kindly than she's said anything all night, not slowing her trip to the door. "You can retrieve it at the Precinct."

"Thank you." She won't dredge up any gratitude. When they're gone, she turns to Inkinser. "How's my husband?"

"I won't lie to you, Mrs. Palmer, you did a hell of a lot of damage."

x

She falls a step back from his hard tone. "Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired."

"Wash your face, brush your teeth and we'll talk about it."

She wants so badly to do so but "We'll talk about it now." Where'd the timid Michelle Lee go in this past year? But that girl hadn't tried to bite off her husband's-

"How is my husband?"

"He's going to require a lot of work. A penis is for more than just for sex." He makes a visible effort to moderate his manner - it can't be easy while looking at the brown smears and lines on her face. "But we have him stabilized. He's resting comfortably, or as comfortably as he can hope to be for the next few months."

"_Months_?"

x

The room starts to spin. If she doesn't get this under control she'll faint. Concentrating on her Centering exercises, seeking the touch of the Goddess to steady her, she barely hears the doctor say

"This isn't setting a bone. You can't immobilize soft tissue. He'll need a colostomy and for a couple of weeks he'll drain urine externally. He also needs reconstructive surgery, and at this point I can't definitely say if he will or won't regain full use."

The room flips again. If she stays here any longer she's going to faint - or try to vomit up yesterday's long expended lunch.

"How did he ever decide not to have me busted?" she wonders, realizes too late she's said it aloud.

"You can thank his priest."

"His priest?" They've never settled on a church to call theirs, let alone selecting a - _NO_!

"When he came in he'd lost so much blood we might have lost him." The room cartwheels and she clutches her stomach. The Centering exercise becomes an Anchoring one, clutching the stability of the building down to the bedrock before she's sure she can stay on her feet. "He had an Emergency Alert card in his wallet. Since we couldn't call you and couldn't reach his physician, a Doctor Mallard, Reverend McGee was the only name left."

She closes her eyes and watches her doom play out on the dark screen; Siobhan to Tim to Special Agent Gibbs to...

"She convinced him not to act until he's spoken to you. She was very persuasive."

She's really getting tired of asking "Can I see him?"

xxx

Recovery is a too large chamber separated into curtained segments and when she's escorted to the proper curtain the room is turning over and over, spinning in the wrong direction and she's sure she's going to faint.

She's managed to wash her face, neck and chest, the coat is closed but he's going to take one look at her and hate her forever.

The nurse escorting her steps through the slot between two curtains and comes back out a moment later. Her expression is so kind Michelle is sure she doesn't know she's the one who hurt him.

"He's sleeping now. He's been sedated but you'll be able to wake him for a few moments."

"Thank you," she whispers. She tried to say it but her voice won't go any higher.

The woman leaves her, but she can't reach out, can't touch that curtain. She can't.

x

"Mrs. Palmer?" behind her almost makes her jump out of her skin but she turns to the white dressed blonde nurse who's even smaller than she is. "It is Mrs. Palmer, is it?"

"Y - yes." For at least until Jimmy calls a Lawyer and divorces her.

The woman holds out a small piece of paper. "Mother McGee asked me to see you get this."

"Thank you." She takes the paper and unfolds it, doesn't even see the woman depart. In Siobhan's flowing script the note says 'When you are ready, meet me in the Pastoral Care Office, 207. S McG'.

She wonders if this will be like throwing herself on the mercy of the Court.

x

Pushing the note into her purse, she turns back to the curtain. Jimmy can't be in here, he can't.

But the blood that'd coated her mouth and stained her teeth, that'd covered her lips and chin and had dripped down upon her half-bare chest won't let her deny what she'd done. Washing it away doesn't change anything. He'll drive her away, call a lawyer the minute he can reach a phone, throw her away, hate her forever.

Maybe he's not here. Maybe this is one long nightmare.

She reaches out and her hand is trembling. She touches the material and wants to be sick, wants to die. This can't - she can't have done what they say she...

She pulls the curtain aside, steps in, lets go and it falls shut behind her and he _is _here. It's true.

x

She doesn't want to cry but can't stop it. Fear and grief war with guilt. How can she have done...?

Tears flow down her cheeks. She can't wipe them, can't stop them. She tries to cry quietly, tries not to wake him.

He's still, placid, asleep... and she's scared to death to wake him. She covers her mouth with her hands, tries to clamp back the sobs, can't breathe then. Doesn't want to breathe. Wants to die. He should have hurt her, not her hurt him. She should be lying there, suffering in agony, facing months of operations. A colostomy bag for months - maybe forever? Maybe he'll never recover? Isn't that what the doctor said?

She cries harder, smothers herself to quiet the weeping. She can't keep it in, it tears through everything she can do. The tears rip at her until she can barely breathe, can barely stand up.

He'll hate her. He must hate her now. What she's done... she can't remember it, but he's so still, and she can't stop crying.

There's an IV bag leading by tube to a taped needle in the crook of his right arm. A bag on his left drips blood into that arm. He lost so much blood into the mattress...

He's still. He's asleep. She stands beside him, sobs breaking through her clamped hands, terrified to wake him and can't stop crying. She can't wake him. She wants to touch him, reaches out but can't touch his hand. He's asleep and she mustn't wake him.

As long as he's asleep she's still married to him.

x

She tries to take a step on trembling legs and crashes hard to her knees, her clamped hands holding back her pained cry. She kneels beside him, bent low, sobbing. If he wakes up and finds her kneeling she might be able to get an apology out before he curses her.

But it won't work. His love is over. Their marriage, so few months new, is over.

She forces herself back to hr feet, wincing at the pain, knowing she's raised new bruises but these she knows.

"Jimmy...?" she whispers behind her hands, the tears so distorting she can barely understand herself. "I'm _sorry_. Goddess, I'm so _sorry_!"

She can't breathe, crying harder still.

She's not sure if she should beg the Goddess for mercy or beg to die.

She wants to die.

For now she'll pray.

For now Jimmy's asleep.

For now she's still married to him.

She reaches out, touches him through the blanket and quickly clamps her hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs. She doesn't want to wake him, doesn't want anyone outside the curtains to -

She can't; they break through and shatter her. She falls to her knees, welcomes the pain, wishes she were in Hades where she can get the punishment she deserves. "Jimmy, I'm _sorry_! Please believe me. I'm so _sorry_!"

The tears, once almost half controllable, shatter her. She weeps into her hands, kneeling beside him, begging for forgiveness though she can't even understand the words.

She's so weak she's sure she's going to faint.

She'd rather die.

She sobs so hard she can't form words, no longer cares who hears.


End file.
